


Minor Chords

by akire_yta



Series: prompt ficlets [273]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013), thunderbirds are go
Genre: Gen, pacrim!au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-18
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-07-15 18:17:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 43
Words: 21,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7233454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akire_yta/pseuds/akire_yta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>everyone asks him what it's like to Drift with EOS</p><p>(title from Doomtree's "<a href="https://youtu.be/DC3LH-mkM-4">Heavy Rescue</a>" because that song is my core John-song)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the comment that started it all

**Author's Note:**

> so preludeinz egged me on to develop my PacRim/TAG AU. Stories currently out of order, I'll reshuffle once I am done. Basic concept is John invents EOS to solve the lack of pilots crisis and makes a Real Person instead. Also issues of different families and giant robots punching giant aliens. Basically all of my favourite things.

So imagine it’s after they’ve closed the Breach, and of course TI are involved in the clean-up.

And imagine Gordon’s _fury_  when John tells him they detonated two nuclear devices and left three massive kaiju corpses in the middle of his ocean.

“Dammit, John, I know you were taught to clean up your messes, same as me. Come on, we’re going fishing.”  And so Gordon actually meets Eos somewhere about a click underwater as he’s looking over the kaiju-blue coated, thoroughly nuked bottom of the Pacific and cursing out whoever decided a dirty nuke was the only option.

There are probably worse family reunions happening, John has to acknowledge, though he’s struggling to think _how_.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> post-closure of the Breach, Gordon finally finds John again

Gordon hasn’t seen John in seven years.  It’s startling to see him now, surrounded by grime and machinery, noise and the babble of a dozen languages that Gordon doesn’t speak.

Gordon remembers the argument.  He’d just turned sixteen that summer, had been intending on going to the beach for a sweet sixteen blowout to end all blowouts when a kaiju had made landfall and stomped his favourite place in all the world off the map.  Everything had turned upside down, that was clear even from their safe harbour in NYC.

John was just a few years older than Gordon, but already in college in New England.  John had flown to NYC specifically to have this argument, or so it had seemed.  It was memorable precisely because it _was_ an argument; a drop-down, drag-out _fight._ All his life, John had been this ethereal, compliant presence in their family, floating obediently at their father’s right hand.  Even though John was only a few years older than Gordon, it felt like an unbridgeable gulf at sixteen.

Gordon had huddled with Virgil at the door and had listened, eyes wide, as John made his argument, clearly rehearsed and planned, voice getting louder with every firm _no_.  The _we can do something_ , the _we can’t hide on the east coast forever_ , the attempted coup de grace of _you always said if we could help, we had a duty_.

Their father had said no one more time.  John had packed his bags and left.  The college he was staying at in New England reported he never arrived.

There had been exactly one message, a postcard without a signature–Hawaii, before it had been slimed with kaiju blue, the picture cracked and bent and covered in postmarks as it had been passed from hand to hand around the pacific until it had arrived in a Kansas kitchen.

Gordon had always wondered if the postcard was intended as a _still here_  or a _fuck you still here_  kind of message.

Now John’s in front of Gordon, waiting patiently, and Gordon’s too afraid to ask.

John looks different; he’d always been thin, but willowy.  This John is whipcord, all softness burned off.  He’s in drill pants that look half a size too large, a t-shirt with a faded logo that Gordon can’t read.

There are fine traceries of scars up John’s bare arms, shaped like the lead in a stain-glass window.  Gordon’s afraid to ask about those, too.

It’s John’s face that has changed the most; John had been nineteen when he’d left his books and his safe college and everything behind.  This John is twenty-six, and Gordon knows enough about life in the Pacific to know it was anything but safe.

But then John smiles, and it’s so familiar the seven years evaporate.  

“Hey Johnny,” Gordon says, voice cracking.

“Hey Gordon.  Look at you, almost grown into your sixth foot,” John teases, and Gordon doesn’t try to stifle his little bark of laughter, even as he feels his eyes prickle.  He steps up, and John doesn’t hesitate, but lets Gordon wrap him in a hug.

“So,” John says in his ear.  “We kind of made a mess in the middle of the Pacific.”

“I heard.”  Gordon steps back, but leaves his hand resting on John’s wrist, feeling warm skin beneath his fingers. “But hey, I’m the nice brother, so I’ll help you clean it up.”  John’s little laugh makes Gordon feel like he’s six and John’s nine, and they’re about to go pull off some scheme.  

John nods, like he’s thinking the same thing, and leads Gordon into the chaos of the Shatterdome.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i have random snips in my head that are totally out of order.
> 
> can i post snips out of order?
> 
> i’m gonna post snips out of order /Newtvoice
> 
> (something from John piloting with Eos, and his scars)

 

John pulled his shoulders back and kept his breathing even, chest rising and expanding as he counted the beats of his heart in groups of six.   _One two three four five six.  Six five four three two one_.Over and over again.  

Around him, his flight crew buzzed like bees, the whine of the drill a high-pitched note in the chorus as each piece of his new Drive suit was screwed and locked into place around his body.  John nodded at the curt question from the deck chief, rolling his shoulders and tilting his head to test his range of motion.

John stepped off the platform alone; his co-pilot didn’t need a suit.  In the corner, the crew deputy, a diminutive Filipino woman who ran the shop with an iron fist, crossed herself and kissed the crucifix that hung around her neck as he walked out of the prep area.  She did that every time any one of them suited up.

John wasn’t religious, and he didn’t understand how faith in ghosts could survive here.  But he nodded thanks at her as he passed.  Out here, they needed all the help they could get. 

The motors hummed as the elevator carried him up.  His Jaeger had one Drive, right in the centre of the room, but more screens than most of the others.  His co-pilot liked for him to be able to see her.  “Eos?”

“Here, John,” she said, her little-girl voice pitched to cut across the noise of the systems booting up.

John couldn’t put into words how it felt to Drift with Eos; the techs and the psych team and the engineers had all made him try. All Jaeger pilots drifted with their machines as much as their biological, human, co-pilots; John had just extended that to its fullest extent.  No other pilot had managed a stable Drift with Eos.  John hadn’t managed a Drift with any of the other likely human pilot candidates.

In that regard, he and Eos were more like all the other pilots than they were different.

As the Drift engaged, all the remaining tension ebbed away.  Eos’ mind was orderly, as familiar as his own, everything in its right place. Structured and focused and _ready_.

John flexed his fingers and they felt their Jaeger respond.  “Ready for drop.”

 * * 

“Vulcan, on your left!”  The other pilots were used to Eos’ voice now, though one or two had described how weird it was to hear a _little girl_  in the middle of a battlefield.  More than one had described Eos to John as someone four feet tall with ribbons in her hair and Mary Janes on her feet.

John had laughed at them then.   He wasn’t laughing now.

They should be better than this.  The Kaiju shouldn’t be this good and repelling them.  The fight should not have made landfall, especially with three Jaeger in the drop.  

John glanced over his right shoulder, saw Vulcan Specter lumber around just in time to deflect the Kaiju’s attack.  John nodded, acknowledging Eos’ call as his fingers flexed, resettling their defensive armour.

The heat was beyond oppressive now, and John shook his head to knock the sweat out of his eyes.  “John, cockpit temperatures in both Mark 3 Jaegers are now passing safe operational limits.”  Eos was watching the systems , trying to hack a patch on the fly as their Jaeger struggled to keep up with the demands of the fight.

It shouldn’t be getting this hot.  “Crack a window,” Katie quipped from over in Vulcan, her pained, gasping laugh rolling through the comms.  “John, can you get over…”

John had already seen the gap in the buildings, a path around.  “Flanking now, keep it busy.”  He gritted his teeth as his skin started to prickle.  “Eos, seriously, the temperature…”

“Venting is not responding.  The ports would need to be accessed manually.”

John ducked and rolled, the entire Jaeger groaning and shuddering as he threw a few thousand tons of metal into a forward roll to dodge a swiping tail. An alarm began ringing.  “Eos!”

“Damage to rear vents.  We now have no way to disperse heat build up from the reactor.  John, we need to get you cool, your suit is approaching its heat limits.”

John shook his head, flexing and rolling his wrist to bring up his weaponry display.  “Not now.”

The rest of the battle passed as if in a fever dream, the recoil of his weapon jolting along his arm as he took the bulk of the neural load of the physical movement, leaving Eos to focus on the cascading failure of their Jaeger’s systems.  Around him as he pushed forward with everything they had, her voice wove between the growing chorus alarms and the final, desperate roar of the Kaiju as it fell.

Their Jaeger dropped to its knees, the support choppers descending like flies around them.

“John,” Eos had whispered in his ear.  “John, they’re opening the hatch.  I’m disengaging the Drift.  I’ll talk to you soon.”

The silence of Drift faded, and pain roared in and wiped everything out.

When he came to in medical, his arms were wrapped in bandages up to his shoulder, and there was a comm unit on the table beside him.  With fumbling, awkward movement, John managed to cram it in his ear.  “Eos?”

“John,” she said with such relief that John forgot she was just a voice in his ear.  His grasping fingers closed around air as he remembered, and he subsided onto the bed as Eos began reciting the litany of his injuries.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> question from the audience: "what does/would his dad think about this!" (timepoints throughout the chrono of the story in my head)

>  

When John first storms out, Jeff is concerned – John never stormed anywhere, he left the thundery dramatics to his brothers.  But Jeff’s not worried.  John is excruciatingly, absolutely logical.  Jeff is sure that John will sit and think this all through to its logical conclusion.

Jeff forgets that logic has little need for things like self-preservation.  John is selfless, and has a surprisingly accurate view of his own strengths and weaknesses.

Jeff’s logic thinks about family, about unity, about keeping them all together and whole.

John’s logic extends that to the entire planet, and concludes that his own life is more than fair trade for everyone else’s.

 * * *

When John’s postcard arrives–and there is no doubt it is John’s, anyone who could has already fled inland, as far from the coast as they can get–Jeff is worried.  He’d pulled strings, got Scott posted to Nevada.  Virgil’s in school in Colorado, and the only place safer than inland is _up_.  Gordon’s still smarting that his Olympic dreams are on hold with the Games on hiatus, but he’s still doing laps in the pool, burning off his energy chasing after Alan.

John is the only son out from under Jeff’s protection.  Jeff had tried, but the PPDC were a world apart, and Jeff had no leverage there.  He has no idea where John is, or what he’s doing, or how real the danger is for his second son.

His mother has a map in her diary that she thinks Jeff doesn’t know about, every landfall marked and dated.  Jeff steals a look when she’s out with the younger boys, eyes roaming over all of the crosses on the tiny map, and hopes that John has found some safe place in between them all to make his stand.

 * * *

When the Wall of Life falls in Sydney, Jeff is not surprised; TI had been offered contracts, and Jeff had turned them all down.  Any engineer could tell you the Wall as designed wouldn’t survive long.

Perhaps only long enough for the vehicles taking shape in a TI hangar to be completed.  There weren’t enough seats for everyone on the planet; only a chosen few even knew of their existence.  Jeff had secured a seat for him, and his mother, his engineer, and his best friend and his daughter, and five seats for his sons.

Jeff wasn’t surprised the Wall fell, but he still had hope he’d get to save them all, and keep them together after the end.

* * *

When the Breach is closed, Jeff quietly shreds all the files related to those hangars.  Some of the signatories on those pages are on his screen now, taking credit for the bravery of a few who had stood up for everyone.

The last page is torn into shreds.  Jeff throws it by the handful into the fire and then pours himself a drink.  He sips for a moment, staring at the flames, before he sits at his desk and opens the new project file.

They’ll need pilots and engineers, oceanographers and planners, to put the world back together.  Seven years too late, Jeff finally understands his second son’s conclusions.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John eats alone.

John eats alone.  

Around him, the Shatterdome is noise and action and movement, a light in the darkness of the storm.  All the tables around him are full; pilots together with their flight support, chopper pilots with their crew, LOCCENT teams spread across two full tables.

John sits alone, eating efficiently, looking at nothing in particular.

New crews find it creepy; old crews are used to him, but not enough to join him.  Any active Jaeger was welcome now, the war dragging on.  But Captain Tracy was, somehow, something else, apart in ways no-one could articulate but everyone could understand.

John finishes his meal, smiling softly at something only he can hear, his hand drifting up to touch the comm fixed in his ear for a moment before he nods, standing and quickly clearing away the remains of his meal.

The other crews watch him go, nodding a silent greeting as he passes by.

The great privilege of the Drift was that you were never alone, you always had someone by your side.

John is a solitary figure caught in silhouette as he pauses in the doorway.  He half-turns, looks back over the crowded tables.  His chest rises and falls, a silent sigh, before he turns and walks away. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> request: Scott & Virgil

Scott’s in civvies as he pushes through the swinging bar door.  In the corner, Virgil raises his hand, catching Scott’s attention.

Scott holds up two fingers and acknowledges Virgil’s nod as he continues on to the bar.  A few minutes later, he pulls out a chair with his foot, depositing two beers on the table as he sits. They clink glasses in silence, and Scott takes a long drink.

“Big party?” he asks in lieu of greeting as he sets his glass back down.

Virgil half-winces, half-smiles as he nods.  A casual wave takes in the streamers and confetti that still scattered around the college bar.  “Just a small, intimate celebration,” he replies, deadpan.

Scott chuckles quietly.  He’d been in transit when the word had come in.  The Breach was closed.  The Kaiju threat neutralized.  War over.  He’d taken leave and hopped on the next plane to Colorado. “So I see.”  He reached for his glass, his fingers playing through the surface condensation.  “Dad’s scheming again.”

Virgil nods as he straightens up a little in his seat.  “When isn’t he,” is his quiet reply.  The silence that follows drags out.  

Scott watches the barkeep half-heartedly try to clean paper streamers away from one end of his bar.  “You in?”

“Is that him asking, or you?” Virgil asks.  Scott wonders where Virgil developed that acidic edge in his voice.

“Me.  You know he won’t.”

The acknowledgement of their fait accompli deflates whatever emotion was brewing in his younger brother.  Virgil blows out a long stream of air as he slumps back in his chair until he’s staring at the ceiling.  “It’s just annoying that he’s not wrong.  It just,” Virgil sits up again, running his hands through his hair.  Scott notes, incongruously, the grease under Virgil’s nails.  “It just feels years too late.”

Scott closes his eyes for a second, hearing what was carefully not said.  They still hadn’t heard anything–Grandma Tracy had promised, if John made contact there, Scott would be the first to know.  He realized he’d half been hoping that Virgil had better news.

“Gordon’s already packed,” he said instead.  The message had arrived as he’d been riding in the cab to the bar, a single photo of a single bag of clothes and a bigger pack of scuba gear.

Virgil smiles, a proper smile, the first Scott’s seen in too long.  “Me too.  We’ve got seats on the first support transport out.”

Scott blinks, a little hurt to be behind on the intel.  “Dad’s moving fast.”

Virgil shakes his head quickly.  “Kyrano got them for us.  I think…” Virgil ducks his head, as if to hide his grin.  “I think Kyrano wants us there before dad.”

Scott taps his finger on the glass, thinking of his CO saying “take all the time you need, heaven knows you’ve not taken much leave lately.”  He thinks of favours owed.  He thinks of the scuttlebutt of a Joint Services operation.

His fingers curve around the glass, and he lifts it to his lips.  “Got another seat?”

Virgil grins and nods.  “We leave tonight.”


	7. promises

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alan and Grandma

Grandma closes the call and sits in the brightly lit kitchen for a long moment.  The only movement is the tick of the old clock on the wall, and the flex of her fingers as they grip the teatowel with white-knuckle tension.

Losing one to that place was bad enough.  Now three more were following.

But she had promised; Virgil had asked, and it had been too long since she’d last seen that light in his eyes, and so she had given her word.

She glanced at the clock; a quarter past six.  Jeff said he’d be home for dinner tonight, though with all the news coming out of the Pacific, she wondered if this was another promise he was going to have to break.

For once, she wished with all her soul that he would.  She promised Virgil she wouldn’t say a word to him until the plane was clear of US airspace.  She did some rough calculations in her head.  Four hours, at least.  Five to be safe.

The chimes of an incoming call filled the house.  “Alan, get that, please?” she yelled.  If it was Virgil calling to talk to his baby brother, they deserved privacy.  If it was her son, well, she was under no illusions she wasn’t the greatest liar in the world.

Alan knew nothing; it wouldn’t be a lie.

She kept the teatowel taut in her hands, twisting the scrap of cloth into a rope and tugging against it, feeling the resistance just to feel something.  The fabric dropped into her lap as the thunder of growing feet announced Alan’s arrival.  “Hey Grandma, that was dad.  He’s stuck in the office…”

She nodded, schooling her features.  “I figured.  Big day.”  Alan was shining, eyes bright, limbs still to lose the awkwardness of youth.  So different from John at that age.  She turned away, busied herself at the cooker.  “Are you hungry?  I was thinking soup and toasted sandwiches.”

She hadn’t promised Virgil not to tell Alan where his brothers were headed.  But she had promised Alan’s mother, on the day their youngest was born, that she’d look out for him.  She’d made the same promise four times before to Lucille, and right now she was feeling a failure four times over.

Alan, she could keep safe.  Maybe just a little while longer. But for now, safe.


	8. who or what

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> what is Eos? who?

John stood at attention, eyes fixed on the far wall.  The PPDC suited him in ways he never expected, but perhaps should have–order, self-discipline, purpose, pressure, all conditions under which he had always thrived.

But other aspects suited him ill.

“Captain Tracy,” and John was sure that in the Marshal's tone he heard a note of exhaustion and frustration with the panel; both men were desperately needed elsewhere.  But whereas for the last near-decade the world had been happy enough to turn their backs on the Pacific, now that the job was done, the eyes of the world were back on them, and on all the minutiae of their work.  “Captain Tracy, could you please explain to the panel, _again_ ,” and that was definitely the twanging sound of patience close to snapping.  “The function of Eos.”

By now, the answer was rote.  “She is my Drift partner and co-pilot of the _Hurricane Dawn_.”

From the monitors, there was a patriarchal _hmmph._   Though they wanted to see everything, take the credit for anything creditable and distribute the blame for any mistakes, the UN panel still hadn’t lowered themselves to actually setting foot in the Pacific.  As long as they weren’t on-base, John could keep a rein on his bubbling temper.  “ _She?_   _**It**_ is more appropriate, is it not?”

John resisted the urge to roll his eyes.  “No sir.  Gender is a function of identity, and she has identified as female.  Sir.” He tacks it on as an afterthought, and didn’t care it sounds like an insult.

It hits like one anyway.  Out of sight of the cameras, Herc spread his fingers, gestures for restraint.  " _It_ ,” and if John’s insult was accidental, this was a deliberate provocation.  Out of the corner of his eye, John sees Herc’s fingers fold into a fist.  “Is a program, a failed attempt at extending the PONS system, is it not?”

“ _She,_ ” and John keeps his tone even.  “Is a non-biological entity, intelligent, capable, self-aware, and independent.  In that regard, she shares four out of five characteristics with any other _person_ ,” and he stresses the word while staring at the camera, knowing that at the other end, it would appear on the screen as direct eye contact.  “In this meeting.  More than that, she is my co-pilot.  We have eight successful Kaiju kills, not including the past week here in Hong Kong.”  He paused, smiling to himself.  On-screen, several of the faces lean into their monitors despite themselves.  “She also has an unreasonable passion for 1960s pop music and Miyazaki films.”  His smile turned into a smirk as he saw several of the panel squirm.  He pushed his advantage.  “The PONS systems don’t have a favourite song, sir.  The PONS cannot exist outside of the Jaeger.  Eos can.  She lives with us, works with us, watches films and cracks bad jokes with us, trains with us for the fight and grieves when one of us falls.  She is a person, ladies and gentlemen, and she is my co-pilot.” One of the figures on screen opened his mouth, his face a scowl of contempt, and John felt a sudden, violent stab of protective rage.

“Captain!” Herc snapped, cutting of the comment from the screen.  “Dismissed.”

John heard the babble of voices start up behind him as he snapped a salute for the Marshal and stalked out of the room.

“John?” a quiet voice whispered in his ear.

John stabbed the elevator call button. “Eavesdropper,” he teased, slumping into a mercifully empty elevator.  “I should have known you were there.  I won’t let them near you, Eos.  I promised.”

“I know,” Eos said with simple faith.  “Thank you.”

The elevator dropped through the levels in companionable silence.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Penelope

John hasn’t seen or spoken to Lady Penelope in a decade.  So when he stumbles out of his bunk to answer the light, metallic,  _tap-tap-tap_  on his door to find her standing before him in an impeccable pink suit and towering heels, he experiences a moment of dislocation.  “Pen?”

Penelope juts out her chin.  “I do believe you’ve actually gotten taller.  I wouldn’t have credited it.  Come along.  Busy day, and I need a local guide.”

And ten years evaporated in an instant, and he’s back in his dorm room, an impatient Penny waiting for him to take her to brunch.  He stared down at her, blinking, and she stared right back, blue-eyed and guileless.  

It was clear that Pen wasn’t going to let a decade of silence get in the way of their friendship.  “Can I at least put my boots on?”

She waits in the doorway, her eyes drifting around his tiny quarters, as he perches on the edge of his bunk and tugs his boots on.  “Spartan,” she notes, at a loss for anything else to say.

John stood, shrugging.  “You need to travel, easiest not to have to carry much.”  He gently shooed her out into the hallway and tugged his bunkroom door shut behind him.  He had never locked it before, but now with all these strangers around, he wondered if he should.

Did this door even have a lock?

“John?”

He shook himself back into the present, and held out an arm for her to take.  The deck was grating in half of the Shatterdome, not designed for designer heels.  “Sorry.  Long day.  Long week.”

“So I hear.”  And John is reminded of the way Penelope always _knew;_ they shared an ability to fit together puzzles, but Penelope also had the human touch that let her gather those pieces far more quickly than John ever could.  “Want to talk about it?”

John smiled, and bowed her through an airlock and into the main area of the Shatterdome.  “How about you tell me what you know, and I’ll confirm or strategically deny it.”

Her bright peal of laughter rings loud across the Shatterdome.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> first fight

“Are you sure?”  Despite the chaos, six different people have asked him this seven different times in the last ten minutes.  His answer hasn’t changed.

“Yes.”

He shivers, just a little, as they bolt the Drive suit around him.  It tugs in weird places; a borrowed suit, pieced together from spare parts.  There hadn’t been time to custom-make one for him.

No-one thought they’d be trying this under live fire.

Two techs ride with him up to the conn pod, and they take their time strapping him in.  He’d been on the team to re-design and build the new gen connpod, he didn’t need their tour, but his mouth was too dry to order them away.  Officially, he was still a technician, same as them.  He probably couldn’t order them away anyway.

The last one out raps her knuckles against his mis-matched helmet.  “Survive,” she orders.

John nods, lets himself dangle in the cradle of the conn as the hatch is sealed shut.  “Eos?” he breathes, almost too quiet to hear above the rushing sound in his ears.

“I’m here, John,” she replies, voice pitched low in his ear.

He doesn’t want to ask if she’s sure.  He doesn’t want to ask if she’s ready.

Because then she’d just turn the question back to him, and he could never lie to her.

“Tracy, this is LOCCENT,” the voice is too-loud in his ears, crackly with static.  A part of John, the part of him that’s a technician, makes a mental note to fix that.  “Are you ready for the drop?”

John nods.  It is Eos who speaks.  “Ready.”

Under the static from LOCCENT, John thinks he hears the edge of an argument.  They’d argued about whether to send John and his strange creation out, they’d argued about whether the patched Jaeger could take it.  They’d argued to a decision, and argued some more.  

There is a jolt, and the disconcerting sensation of his stomach dropping out.  John forces himself to relax, gives slightly at the knees as the conn joins the main body of the Jaeger.  To his left, there is a clatter as the empty conn harness rattles with the impact.

The screens in front of him light up as the hard connections are made.  Eos is in them, changing the layout, the colours, the visuals, until the display is more to their liking.  Beneath his boots, he feels the power of the Jaeger build up as its engines build towards maximum.

John smiles, and his nerves ebb with the familiarity of her mutterings as she comments on the quality of the code.  “Eos?”

“Yes, John?”

“This is a full combat Drift.  We’ve never done one of those before.”

He could almost hear her shrug.  “I like firsts; it means no-one can tell you you’re doing it wrong.”

John is still laughing softly as LOCCENT calls the countdown into the Drift.

_Three.  Two.  One._

Eos’ memories are square like right angles, and John lets himself weave between them, minor chords that support the major line.  The crackle of the comms, the roaring rumble of his patched-up Jaeger, the edges of men arguing, all fade away into the Silence.

The Drift.  It was like being in the eye of a hurricane.

John and Eos lifted their head, feeling the extension of metal limbs and an armoured body.  Before them, the Shatterdome walls opened, letting in the first golden rays of a new day.

Together, they stepped out into the ocean.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> after the first battle

Dr Jeong looks up as the door bangs open, but her hands stay put, resting gently on John’s forearm.  “Mild wrist sprain,” she announces, cutting off the question before it can be asked.  “I only wish most of you came back this lightly bruised.”

The Shatterdome’s commander at least waits for Dr Jeong to finish taping down the bandage before he speaks again.  “You’re an engineer, aren’t you?” he asks.

John nods, gently stroking the rough texture of the bandage with his good hand.  His head feels strangely empty, muscles he didn’t even knew he had were aching, and his stomach was roaring, but he still felt like he was flying, every nerve ending fizzing.  “Yes, sir.”

“It’s Captain, now.”  

John’s head snapped up.

“PPDC needs all the pilots we can get.  I read your report.  You know this.”  The commander glanced over his shoulder at the LOCCENT Chief, who just shrugged.  “Your Drift was as good as any I’ve seen fight, even if…well, it’s odd, son, but we don’t have the resources to turn our noses up.”  He stepped backwards  half a step.  “Report to the senior pilot at 0800 tomorrow to start your tactics training.  And that Jaeger is all we’ve got, but I’ll assign you a tech detail.  I’m sure an engineer like you can turn it into something you’d want to pilot.”

“Yessir,” John said, tongue tripping over the words like it hadn’t since he was six and still got excited about ice cream.  “Thank you, sir,” he added, more under control.

The commander paused, studying him.  The hand he laid on John’s shoulder was almost fatherly.  “Son,” he said. “I’ve just signed your death warrant by giving you that commission.  Don’t thank me.  Please.”

John sat, mouth open, as the commander turned on his heel and marched out of the Infirmary.

 * * *

The painkiller had mostly worn off, but John still made the aching climb up twenty flights to the work deck near the head of the Jaeger.  

Their Jaeger.

Eos was humming something familiar, bright and poppy, as he powered up the final flight of metal steps and staggered over to the railing.  He clutched the thin metal rail with his good hand as he fought to get his breath back.

Their Jaeger was open before him, the ablative armour stripped off for refurbishment, repair, replacement.  It’d taken some hits, but nothing it couldn’t handle.

“It’s tough,” John commented.

The humming dipped into the background of his earpiece.  “We could make her tougher,” she said.  In his pocket, his PDA buzzed, and he pulled it out to see the schematics Eos was rolling across the tiny screen.  

“You think we could make it better?’

“We have the technology,” Eos intoned, then laughed, light and sweet.

John snorted as he pocketed his PDA.  “Who let you into the media archive?”

“I let myself.  You sleep a lot.” 

John stared into the heart of their Jaeger.  “We’ll, we’re not going to have much time for sleep or bad TV for a while.”  He turned, and headed for the gantry that’d take them over to the technician’s control station.  “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> she asks, family

Penny is sipping tea out of a metal canteen mug when John hunts her down.  He grabs a coffee and steals the last bagel on his way; he has no idea how long since sleep was or will be again.

There was just so much to do.

Nodding greeting at the tables he passes, John slides onto the bench opposite Penelope.  She smiles sweetly as she sets the mug down, long, manicured fingers wrapping around the dented metal.  “John, darling.”

“Pen, darling,” he mimics back. He takes a bite out of his bagel, careless enough with his manners that Penelope’s nose wrinkles, just a tiny bit.  John’s too tired to care.  “Tell me, when did you find out?”

“Swallow then speak, there’s a good chap,” she said.  “And find out what, exactly?”

John swallowed and chased it with a scalding sip of coffee that makes his eyes water.  “That the next flight in from the US has three Tracy’s on the manifest?”

Penelope’s eyes twinkle as she lifts her mug to her lips.  “Well, that was quick.  Parker will be annoyed he bet wrong.”

John rolled his eyes as, in his ear, Eos fed in a few choice snippets of manifest data.  “Annoyed he bet wrong, or annoyed that your father’s signature is on the requisition docket for those seats?”

The _clink_  of metal touching the table tells John he’s scored a direct hit.  “That’s remarkably observant of you, John.”

“What can I say?”  He took another bite out of his bagel and chewed it as obnoxiously as he could without disgusting himself, earning himself a ladylike scowl.  He needed Pen off balance for this; she was too strong an opponent otherwise.  “I’m observant.”  He swallowed and dropped the act.  “Why are they coming?”

Penny traced the tip of her finger around the circumference of her mug.  “Officially?  Pilot, engineer, oceanographer?  They’re required skills to assess the scope of the cleanup, worthy of a seat on that flight.  And if those seats can also satisfy a family’s longing to be reunited with their lost brother, well.  Two birds, as they say.”

John made himself finish his ad hoc meal before replying, his mind whirring through possible permutations of the scenario.  In his ear, Eos stayed oddly quiet.  “To be honest, Pen, I’m not sure if I want to thank you or slap you right now.”

She smiled, unconcerned.  “Don’t pass onto them the sins of the father, John.  And don’t hate them for being afraid.”  She peered into her mug, frowning at the dregs.  “All right, perhaps you can hate us a little for being afraid.  But don’t cut off your nose to spite their faces.”

John laughed, harsh and quick.  “I never really understood that phrase.”

“You take my meaning.   You always did.”  She stood, her mug dangling her a curved finger as she stepped around the table to pause by his side.  “Whatever was said, all those years ago?  That was another world. It’s up to you whether you greet them as brothers, use them for their skills, or ignore them.”  She ducked down to peck a lighting fast kiss against his hair.  “Just promise me you’ll use that brain to decide, and not be led by pride.”

Then she was gone.  John stared into the dark swirls of his coffee.  “What do you think?” he asked quietly.

Eos hummed softly.  “I think,” she said at last.  “That Gordon left in the night without telling anyone he was going.  That Virgil paused his PhD enrollment.  That Scott is on a leave of absence from his commission, all to fly around the world to a disaster.  I think that means something.”

John nodded, and sat there in silence, until his comm chimed announcing the arrival of the flight inbound from Hawaii.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> eos/brothers/drift

The very first Drift, before there was a Jaeger, before the fight, when John had just been a technician and Eos had been a secret, happened in the middle of the night in a sub-basement where nobody ever went.

The PONS had been scratched together from discarded parts, jacked into the mainframe where Eos had her first moment of genesis.  John had been there, then, had watched her grow since.  

As the connection initialized and they Drifted for the very first time, he was curious about who Eos was in terms of her thoughts, her patterns, how she saw the world.

Eos was curious about who John had been.

A part of John was aware he was reclined in a battered armchair, a neural cradle on his head.  A part of John was in Eos, feeling the entire Shatterdome as a series of electrical pulses.  But for the most part, they Drifted as Eos explored.

The memories were shards, images and emotions, scattered and out of sequence.

Scott, older, stronger, like father in miniature, but also playful, gently teasing, endlessly fair when no adults were watching….

Virgil, his closest, his opposite, playing music, already bigger and stronger though he was younger; John under the piano, reading, feeling Virgil’s music through the bones of his ribs….

Gordon, lighting-fast, like Eos herself, and she laughed as she chased his memory, tasting of salt water and sun-warmed everything as it darted around the space they shared in Drift.

Kayo, their sister in every way that counted, reaching out to haul John up, wrapping her fingers around his to make a fist, teaching him with endless patience to stand his ground….

Alan, tiny, face tilted up, eyes wide and already full of stars, and John felt Eos wrap her thoughts around the memory as if to keep it safe….

Eos’ mind turned and twisted, and John took the invitation to explore, seeing the world through a thousand camera eyes, from the detail of the scopes to the grainy, cris-crossed feeds of the security cameras. He could see himself, now, reclined with the PONS like a crown in the centre of the dark room made bright with night vision.

She was always watching him, feeling him move through space like he felt music through his ribs.

John checked his monitors with her eyes, satisfied the Drift was stable.  He dug into memories he’d thought he’d forgotten, sharing with her the feel of sunlight, the taste of birthday cake, of ghost stories told under covers by torchlight, and sleepy pancake breakfasts.

The Drift didn’t so much break as unfold itself like a sigh.  John napped, right there in the chair, until Eos’ voice in his ear prompted him up and to his scheduled duty.

It was late afternoon by the time he was relieved.  John changed into civvies that smelt a little musty, and caught a lift with another engineer into town.

The woman behind the counter explained with sad eyes that the postal service was erratic.  It might not make it all the way to Kansas.

But John had to try.  He didn’t have the words, but he shoved the postcard into the mail all the same, and hoped they’d understand.


	14. with an if in her soul

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> grandma's journal

She’s been Grandma so long it’s become a title, role expectation and label all rolled into one.  Even Jeff sometimes calls her Grandma, a throwback to when the boys were small and he was trying to lead by example.

Grandma is the title she’s held the longest, longer than ‘mother’ or ‘wife’ or even her own self.

She forgets, sometimes, the red-headed wild thing she once was.  She sees flashes of it, in all the kids, even Kayo, though nothing binds them together except sheer force of will.

Her journal is her way of tying all those threads together, of making sure she loses nothing; that nothing important gets left behind.

The day after they realize where John has gone, she acquires the map.  She think she cuts it out of a magazine–certainly everywhere she turned, everyone was talking about the Pacific.

There was still a thread of hope, back then.  The Jaeger program was shiny and new, and if she was honest with herself, if this had all happened when she had been nineteen and cocksure as to how the world was a better place with her in it, she’d probably have run off to Japan too.

But nineteen was a long time ago, for her, and she’s not much sure of anything anymore.

Mr Kyrano traces John as far as Okinawa.  After that, he vanishes.

John is nineteen, red-headed, and wild in the sense that he holds his own intelligence at the core of his identity, and will follow his mind wherever it leads.

She steals one of Alan’s gold stars, presses it over the dot marking Okinawa.  Every kaiju is marked on the map, in her careful, tiny hand; Raythe and Clawhook, Taurax and Onibaba.  Each kaiju name and date points to a Shatterdome: Okhtosk and San Fran, Mindanao and Tokyo.

The map is small, the distances between dots tiny until she’s curving her hand to make the names all fit.

She presses a hanky to her face as she carefully writes in _Mutavore_  and draws the arrow to Sydney.  She pauses, then adds _Wall of Life breached_.

There is no Shatterdome in Sydney, not any more.  Grandma sniffs and draws a circle around Hong Kong.  If John still lives, she now knows where he is.

It’s the _if_ that worries her most.


	15. Rule One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> that time John almost got lost in the Drift

Rule One: Trust Your Co-pilot

Rule Two: Don’t Chase The RABIT

Rule Three: Pilots Don’t Let Co-Pilots Chase the RABIT

John stared at the note scrawled in the margins of his second-hand text, shrugged, and turned the page.  But the words stayed with him as he earned his Captain’s bars, survived his drops, got used to the silence of the Drift.

Don’t Chase The RABIT

“JOHN!  DON’T CHASE THE RABIT!”  Memory turned into Eos’ voice, screaming in his ear with an emotion he’d never heard from her before.

In his mind, there was that noise again, and John wrenched against his harness as he turned to see what it was.

“JOHN!”  Around him, the screens lit up and he hissed in pain as Eos flooded his headset with high-pitched, squealing feedback that obliterated any other sound.  

“Ok, ok! EOS!”

The screens dimmed, the noise subsided.  John hung in the harness and concentrated on sucking in air as fast as his respirator could supply it.  “Dawn?” a voice called over the comms.  “We’re seeing some huge spikes and deviations in your Drift.  Please confirm?”

John lifted his head, eyes closed.  “Confirm, LOCCENT, but we’re smoothing it out now.”

A click on the microphone, then a new voice, deeper and richer.  “Can you fight?”

John glance at a screen flashing green.  “We can fight.”

“Good,” the voice said.  “Steady yourself and prepare for drop.”

The line cut out, and a second later, Eos was back in his ear.  “Are you sure, John?”

He nodded, knowing she could see him.  “It was just a memory.  I know that, Eos.  And you pulled me out before it got too deep.  I’m good if you are.”

A pause, a split second for a human, an age for Eos.  “I’m good.  Prepare for drop.”

John let her manage the last few tasks, and focused instead on his breathing, his training, his discipline.

Always remember Rule One.


	16. the call

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> that one time John almost calls home

They’d lost Cherno and Typhoon.  In his heart, John knew he’d be having nightmares of the sounds of their deaths for however long he lived.  

Dawn, Striker and Gypsy were being repaired as fast as the remaining crews could source patches.  There were two separate nukes on the Shatterdome deck, under armed guard, the very definition of dirty bombs.  Scuttlebutt was flying that the Marshal was dying, that Hansen’s arm was broken in two places.

And the word from Science was that they were facing a triple event within forty-eight hours.

John kept his hands in his pockets to hide the fact he was shaking.

His tech team had shooed him away from Dawn, told him to get some rest. John had taken a meal back to his bunk, but the distant sounds of work crews kept dragging at his attention like a RABIT.

John ate what he could, then shoved the tray away.  He considered a letter, but anything he wanted to commit to writing was already locked up in the package every pilot had, under the seal _To Be Opened Post-Mortem._

This close, there was no time for false pride.  “Eos, can you connect a call to the US?”

Eos made a sound.  “I’m sorry, John.  The United States has instituted a communications blackout on all electronic communication emanating from this region.”  She paused, tactfully.  “They’re scared too.  I could record something?”

John shook his head, standing up so quickly the tray rattled on his tiny desk.  “No.  Best not.  How are repairs coming?”

“78% complete.  John, you really should...”

“Eos,” he cut her off.  “Let them remember me like I was.”  He closed his eyes, and the memories played out in his mind’s eye like he was Drifting.  “Let the memories lie.”

He stalked out of his bunk and slammed the door behind him.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> that time no-one would listen

“I can pilot it.”  John stayed in his seat, unsure he had even spoken, as around him, voices were raised in debate and accusation.  He licked his lips and tried again.  “I can pilot it.”

Su Lin leaned over the back of his chair.  “Whatever  you’re trying to say, you’re gonna need to shout it,” she advised, popping her gum as she winked at him.

“I said, I can pilot it.”

Her shout of snorting laughter drew the attention of everyone in the room.  “Oh, kiddo.  You’re not even on the pilot training roster.  Both pilots are down and out.  We need a real solution now, not a pipe dream.”

Around him, the room dissolved into a dozen separate debates as everyone tried to solve the problem of a looming Breach event and a Jaeger without a pilot.

His pocket buzzed.  John slipped out his PDA.   _See that training module in the corner?_

John looked up, smiled slowly, and made his way over to PONS system that dominated the back third of this lab.

If no one would listen, he’d show them his solution.


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> that one time he was scared he'd lost her

No Kaiju had ever attacked like this before.  No Kaiju had ever had weapons beyond fangs and scales and claws.

The EMP lashed across _Dawn’s_  flank, and around him, systems sparked and went dark in a cascading failure until John was alone in the conn with only emergency lighting and the distant glow of Hong Kong to guide him.

With the loss of power, the PONS had gone offline, the Drift shut down.  John pounded against the arms of the cradle, but nothing responded.  “Eos?  EOS!”

There was no reply.

John was completely alone, in a statue that wouldn’t respond, standing on the shore of a vulnerable city, as out in the harbour, a Kaiju circled his friends.

He was alone.

Fighting back the fear, fighting back every emotion that would hinder him now, John unhooked the harness and dove for the central power relay at the back of the conn.

He’d designed every system around him.  He’d tear through every one until he found her again.


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the next time he sees Grandma

“Hey asshole,” Gordon shouted cheerfully.  “Catch.”

John caught the device tossed at him, barely.  “Watch who you’re calling....grandma?”  John bobbled the tiny slab of glass, managing to get it right way up.  “Grandma?”

Halfway around the world, Grandma sat in the kitchen, her fist in her mouth as the view on the screen span and rotate and brought her grandson into view. “Oh Johnny, there you are.”  She flicked her hankie like a whip at the camera.  “Who do you think you are, too good to call your dear old grandma?”

Even on the small screen, she could see John’s cheeks redden.  “Sorry, grandma.”  His eyes roamed around his screen.  “It’s good to hear your voice.”

“Yours too,” she said warmly.  “Now leave the work to Gordon,” she said, smiling at the sound of Gordon’s distant yelp.  “And tell me everything you’ve been up to.”


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> brothers/drift

Scott doesn’t figure it out until much later.  The military is always testing, physicals and mental assessments, personality quizzes they got out of magazines for all Scott knows.  He does everything his superiors demand, and never really thinks about it again unless something else happens.

He’s waiting, sitting on the tiny chair at the tiny desk in John’s tiny bunk, for John to get back from the shower that Scott had insisted he take before they hit the line for chow.  The walls are bare except for the shelf by the desk, stacked high with books.  Scott spins idly on the chair, reading down the spines.  Most are to do with computer systems, several with quantum in the title.  At the end, stacked like a roadblock to stop the heavier titles from falling off, are a pile of manuals, all blue covers and spiral binding.

They look worn, well-used, and Scott tugs the top one off the pile for a closer look.  The now ubiquitous PPDC seal is at the top, and below that, in block letters:

**PILOT INSTRUCTOR TRAINING MANUAL:  ASSESSING DRIFT COMPATIBILITY**

Scott frowned; he’d heard that word, Drift, all over the base, but all John had said when asked was that it was silence, whatever that meant.

Slowly, he turned a page.  The frontispiece was a bullet-point list.  Scott read down it slowly, his frown deepening.  The neural handshake?  The Drift bond?   _Bushedo?_   

Scott flipped through the rest of the manual, pausing as he caught sight of notes jotted in John’s unique scrawl.

 _The basis of psycho-linguistic patterning for the neural handshake is common experience._ Beside this, John had written _can you build these patterns, or must they be concomitant evolution?_

The next page John had written on was a checklist of personality and performance traits.  John’s ticks were a neat row, and Scott remembered filling out his own ticks, not nearly as neatly, as he had evaluated each pilot in his own squadron in turn.  Just another exercise, he had thought.

He folded the cover back hastily as he heard Virgil’s voice echoing up the metal corridor.  Scott just managed to get it back on the pile and square as John stepped through the door.

Scott smiled, totally natural.  “Ready to roll?”

He _knew_  he’d put it back perfect.  But John’s eyes darted to the bookshelf just the same.  John didn’t say anything though, just tossed his towel onto a hook.  “Let’s get out of here.”


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> secrets found out

Scott sits, his feet propped up on the edge of his bunk as he rolled the stylus for his tablet slowly through his fingers.

“I know that tic,” Virgil announced from the opposite bunk, slowly lowering his book to grin at Scott over it.  “Scooter’s got his a-thinkin’ pants on.”

Scott threw the stylus at Virgil.  “You were five when we left Kansas, you can’t do podunk right.”

Virgil laughed as he caught the stylus in the palm of his hand and tossed it right back.  “Ok, I’ll leave that to you.  But seriously, whatcha thinking about?” he sing-songed.

Scott tapped the stylus against his kneecap.  “Have you figured out what this Drift thing is?”

Virgil sat up, his book spilling in his lap.  “Something to do with how they got three hundred fricking feet of steel to fight like a ninja.  That’s the best I can guess.”

The word _bushido_  adds itself to the mess of ideas rolling around his brain.  Scott taps out on his knee a new pattern with his stylus.  “Have you heard the phrase neuro-linguistic handshake?”

Virgil snorted.  “No.  Sounds awesome.  What is it?”

The stylus stilled.  “I think that’s what Drift actually is.  And I think John can do it.”

Virgil leaned forward.  “Scott, what are you saying?”

Scott span around, mirroring Virgil’s posture.  “I’m saying I think when John says ‘we did this,’ it’s not like Penny’s ‘we.’  It’s something he did.  As a pilot.  Doing this Drift thing.”

Virgil shook his head hard.  “No.  Come on, man, it’s John.  He can’t be a pilot.  If anyone, I’d suspect you.”

“He wasn’t a pilot.” Scott bit his lip.  “What if he made himself one.”

“In more ways than you can imagine.”  Scott and Virgil both leapt to their feet, looking around the tiny room for the source of the voice.  “Please, be seated.  I will not harm you.”

Neither man sat.  “Who are you?”

“I am Eos.  I am the copilot of the Hurricane Dawn, alongside your brother.  Who is also my creator, or at least my genesis.  I like to think I make myself.  Please, _sit,”_ the voice added with a steely note of command.  “John is on his way.”  

Scott lowered himself slowly down as the voice _giggled_.  “He is rather cranky,” the voice continued.  “He bet that you would not come to the correct conclusion as to his flight status.  He now owes me a RAM update, so thank you Scott.”

Scott still had his head in his hands when John arrived.


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John misses the Drift

John misses the Drift.

He misses the quiet.  He misses the feeling of _knowing_  someone, from beginning to end, without the need for awkward words or half-gestures.

He misses the presence of it, the immediacy, the absolute certainty as to where you are and what you need to do.

If he’s honest, he even misses feeling three hundred feet tall, walking through cities like they are toys, striding through the ocean like it’s a millpond.

He misses feeling invincible and yet at the same time stripped bare.

John reads the whitepapers, the memos, the stream of documents from research.  He knows there are concerns of addiction, of dangerous disintegration of the ego barrier.  These concerns are given about as much weight by the pilots as the radiation shielding.

_If we survive the war, then we’ll worry._

John has survived the war. Eos has survived.  He doesn’t _need_  to Drift, it’s not a compulsion, not an insatiable urge.  He knows who he is and where _he_  ends.  His brain hasn’t melted out his nose, a real and actual worry of the PONS development team.

John just misses the silence.


	23. Chapter 23

The Shatterdome’s are like steel traps; they swallow up what they need from the surrounds, but nothing much comes back out to the cities they serve.  That is the agreement and the promise of the Shatterdome.

John knows he’s not the only pilot grateful that, somewhere in the early days of the program, the true nature of pilots was buried under a ton of official secrets stamps.  Between the groupies and the religious zealots, John didn’t think he could handle being a public figure on top of being a pilot.

Especially as his co-pilot is not what you’d call photogenic.  Or photograph-able at all.

He’s waiting now, at parade rest, ignoring the gawking passers-by as the sounds of the argument grow louder from inside the Marshal’s quarters.

Shatterdomes swallow resources, time, money and manpower.  There was always going to be oversight, even if lately if felt like more oversight than resource.

The door bangs open.  “Captain!” the Marshal snaps.  “Inside!”

John stiffens at attention, his heels tapping a staccato on the decking as he marches inside and takes up position behind Captain Hansen’s chair.  There is respite in the rituals of his rank.

 _Our guest seems rather put out by all the shiny in the room_ , Eos purrs in his ear.

John has to agree; the man from the UN oversight committee is small, rounding and balding in the way some men do once they pass their prime.  Next to a looming, enraged Stacker Pentecost, he reminds John of nothing so much as a…

 _Lemming.  About to be eaten_.

John has to bite the inside of his lip to hide his smile.  The comparison is apt, though.  He now understands why he was ordered to wear his dress uniform when he was summoned; it was clear from the ribbon bars they wore how many Kaiju they had killed between them.

_Intimidation game._

John subtly nods understanding and tries to look coolly disaffected by the man’s presence.

The lemming rallies, or at least tries to.  “This is Captain Tracy?  What of his co-pilot?  Our files are very irregular.  No rank, no next of kin, nothing.”

“I’m her next of kin,” John said.

“And she has declined rank,” Pentecost added smoothly. “Her designation is Pilot.”

“I still wish to meet her.”

“Out of the question.”  Pentecost’s voice is a snap like a whip.

The lemming lifted his chin, a foolhardy bravery of someone who doesn’t realize how little power they actually wield.  “I insist.”

John’s eyes dart to the Marshal; this was getting too close to a pissing contest for his liking.

It’s Hansen who comes to his rescue.  “Need to ogle, huh?” he asks with such disgust that the lemming takes a step back automatically.

“I beg your pardon?”  But the lemming is clutching his files to his belly.  John’s not the only one whose eyes narrow.

Hansen pushes in for the kill.  “I know your type.  Thing for a pretty lady in a uniform.  You should be ashamed, mate.”

There is no defense for the accusation that wouldn’t sound like a confession, and the lemming knows it.  There is stuttering, and backpedaling, and papers being scooped back up and shoved back into a plain black briefcase.  The metal hatch bangs loudly as it closes behind him.

Only then did John relax.  “Thanks,” he tells Hansen with feeling.

Herc nods, a taciturn acceptance of the compliment.  “You’re gonna have to work on your story, mate.  They’re only going to keep asking.”

“She is odd,” Pentecost added.

“Thank you, Marshal,” Eos announces from the speakers, bright and bubbly and pitched, John knew, to stay just this side of Pentecost’s last nerve.  “Also, I have no recollection of turning down a commission.  Captain Eos has a nice ring to it.”

John doesn’t bother to hide his smile this time.

Pentecost rubs his temples.  “There is no way you are getting any authority to boss people around, you overgrown bucket of circuits.  And stay out of my files,” he adds.  “Dismissed.”


	24. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eos plays a prank

John is sipping his coffee, taking a moment of blessedly free time to catch up on his reading, when he becomes aware of a heated whispered argument behind him.

He puts down his tablet and twists in his seat.  Behind him, a bunch of techs, new recruits by the look of them, all make faces and try to hide behind each other.  One, the chosen sacrifice, is shoved forward.  “Yes?” John asks.  The article he’d been reading had been very interesting, and who knew when his pager would go off next.

“Um, excuse me, Captain, sir, but we were wondering…”

“Yes?” John snapped, trying to hurry things along.

“Your, umm, co-pilot girl, voice, um?”

John rolled his eyes.  “Her name is Eos.”

The baby tech blushed down to his boots.  “Yessir.  But, well, we were learning about how to maintain the PONS neural interface in training yesterday, and she started correcting us, like, over the PA.  Loudly.  And, and she said we were to address her as Captain?”

John sighed.  “You sound like you have a question but what exactly is it.  Spit it out.”

“Is she a Captain, sir?”

John huffed and made a mental note to have a word with Eos.  But he could understand.  These guys were so green they were begging for it.  “She said she was, didn’t she?  Are you disbelieving the word of a Captain, technician?”

“Sir, no sir!” the technician squeaked.

“Very good, dismissed.”  The entire herd stampeded out.

John returned to his article.


	25. Chapter 25

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eos is a prankster

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (yes, i have opinions that there are no NZ jaegers)

“We need to talk about Eos.”

John looked up, blinking hard as he brought his mind out of his textbook and back to the here and now.  Aroha and Arete Ruihea were staring down at him, matching glares on their matching faces.  

John sighed and closed out his work.  “What has she done now?”

Aroha pulled out the chair opposite him, sat down, and launched into her story.

 * * *

John put his books down on the bench that was serving as his desk, and quietly closed the door behind him.  “Eos?”

Her voice was pitched low, the speaker above the door barely crackling.  “Are you mad?  You’re mad, aren’t you?  They said I wasn’t a real pilot.  Please don’t be mad.”

John rubbed his temple, then laid his hand over his eyes, as if hoping to find sense in the darkness.  “’[Tiptoe Through The Tulips](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DzcSlcNfThUA&t=MGJhZmIxOWIxZGNkMTU5NjNhMjIzOWQwOWNjMzFiN2JlNjk2MGNjZixzSzZtcG1IeA%3D%3D)?  Ten times in a row? At full volume, in their bunk, at midnight? Really, Eos?”

There was a hiss of static that might have been a prevarication.  “No…?” she tried at last.

“No?”

Another burst of static.  “I did play them ‘[Sugar, Sugar](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2Fh9nE2spOw_o&t=OGJhM2NjOGQ3YTI4OTRiMjliZjgxNGVjYTkwYjI3MjYzZDIyNmMzZCxzSzZtcG1IeA%3D%3D)” between repeat four and five,” she confessed.  “John?  Are you all right?”

John dove for his bunk and shoved his pillow onto his face so no-one passing by outside would hear his laughter.


	26. Chapter 26

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> after the EMP

Eos is aware of herself coming back by degrees.

It’s disconcerting, the way parts of her being slot themselves together, one by one.  Core code, memory, ancillary scripts, data inputs, access points.  There are pico-seconds between each, but to Eos they are terrifying gaps in her sense of self.

Drift stays resolutely offline.  Eos hits the run sequence fifty trillion times, one second of her full attention.  

John isn’t there.

Cameras and conn interface come online last, and Eos scans the signals.  There isn’t much; everything non-vital is dead, and most of the essentials are greyed-out lines on her interface.

It’s dark in the conn, but the cameras are designed for that.  John is kneeling by the back wall; a dozen possibilities play out in a micro-second as to the dangers of being out of his harness in the field.  His helmet is on the deck, halfway across the conn.  It’s on its side, as if John had flung it away.

She can’t see his face, the way he’s buried halfway up to his chest in the sensitive electronics of the _Dawn._   But she can hear him, muttering circuit maps to himself as he paws through the racks.

“John?”

There’s a muffled yelp as John bumps against something solid.  He pulls himself out and onto his feet, turning to grasp the back of his control harness. His face is turned up, slightly, human mind automatically tracking and turning towards the source of her voice.  “Eos?  Are you ok?  What’s your status?”

“I rebooted?”  She means it as a statement of fact, but somehow, her voice in the speakers has the tone of a question.  Disconcerted.

“EMP, I think.”  John’s gloved hand rubs the side of his head, like it’s aching.  “I can’t raise anyone, I’ve got no idea what’s going on out there.”

She has access to his suit now, his biometrics.  She tracks the data back to where everything stops, but finds no answers.  She scrolls back to the present, sees the sudden drop in his stress levels five seconds ago.  “You were concerned?”

John’s eyeroll is discernible even in the low light.  But he doesn’t address her question.  “Can you help me get the systems online?” he asks instead.

There are still too many lines of red, too many greyed out fields in her access query database.  “Systems are compromised.  We need to get you out.”

“Not without you!”  It’s a snarl, all emotion in a way John so rarely is. His heartbeat monitor spikes, skin conductivity peaking suddenly.

Eos backs up her main code and databases before every launch.  She’d lose some time, but her core would be sustained.  John knows this, but from what she knows from the Drift, she suspects that sometimes he forgets.

John doesn’t know about the time delay code that would wipe the backup from the database if John was declared gone, never to return.  She wasn’t going without him either.  “The PONS is non-responsive.  Let me try to rebuild the comm connection.”

John nods, breathing deliberately.  “I’ll see if I can at least get perimeter sensors online.”  He turns and kneels back at the open rack.  She can’t see his face with the cameras fixed in position.  

Eos continues to extrapolate data from his biosensors as she works on the _Dawn’s_  codebase.  It’s disconcerting to be in their Jaeger but not in John’s mind, to not have his in hers, and his rapid breathing and fast pulse suggest she’s not the only one concerned.

If they were to cease, she wanted to be in the Drift with John, not separated by air and dead circuits.

Eos changes a setting and tries powering up the core Jaeger systems again. She could ask John, she knows, and she knows that he would tell her how he was feeling, what he was thinking.

But she _wanted_  the Drift.  The Drift was silence.

The Drift was safe.


	27. birthdays

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> john and birthdays

John’s 18th, at his own request, had been a quiet dinner, bright and breezy.  The whole extended family is there, laughing and smiling under the golden glow of the setting sun, all John’s favourite dishes on the table, practical gifts wrapped up in shiny paper.

Most of that stuff John left behind in the end.  He took the shirt Alan gave him, a classic NASA print that must have taken him ages to find.  And he took the book Penny had given him, slim-bound, pages creamy and blank.

Nothing else had fit int the small duffel he was taking.  Nothing else probably belonged in there anyway.

 * 

There had been a landfall in Alaska three days before John turned 19.  There were muted birthday well-wishes, but the comm lines were jammed and John didn’t want to hold up a space on the network.

There was no party.  It had felt wrong, disrespectful.

John sat in his dorm in New England, safe from the horrors of the Pacific coast, and watched the news until his eyes were burning and he couldn’t bear it any longer.

Two weeks later, John had been yelling, actually yelling, for his father to listen. 

Three weeks later, John climbed into a helicopter in Okinawa port, a single duffel slung over his back.

He felt a lot older and way too young to be only 19.

 *

John spent his twentieth birthday up to his armpits in a shattered PONS system, trying to salvage the parts he needed.  His brain was so full of numbers and code and _possibility_  that the date had no place to register.

The PONS had a working handshake chip, a gift from Fate.

Two months later, Eos had spoken for the first time.  That year was her year zero; it’s the only date of worth on that calendar that he remembers.

*

The base commander had held him back after briefing.  He waited for the room to clear before he nodded solemnly and shook John’s hand.  “Happy 21st, son.”

John had nodded, his Drive suit still foreign enough to be noticeable as he moved.  “Thank you, sir.”

The commander nodded again; he wouldn’t meet John’s eye.  “Now report to your jaeger.  You drop in ten.”

 *

Eos told on him. This base had handled her more gracefully than most, though he hated even thinking the word _handled_.  But they did, and so Eos spoke more, made her presence in the wires and the cameras a little more noticeable.

And somewhere in there, she had told on him to the other pilots.

At breakfast, there was a bran muffin with someone’s zippo lighter squished in on top.  “Sorry, Tracy,” Aroha said, grinning like a trickster, her tā moku lifting as she grinned.  “We couldn’t find any candles, and you know what the sugar rationing is like.”  She nudged the plate closer to him.  “But, ah, ta da!  Happy birthday, weirdo.”

John had sighed but blown out the zippo by way of flicking the lever.  Everyone had cheered.  John had torn the old muffin apart over an old plate, and it was passed around like sacrament, everyone taking a morsel, laughing and joking with each other around that table.  The muffin was dry, and a little gritty, but sitting there, with those people, at that time, it tasted like the best birthday cake he’d ever have again.

 *

The tshirt Alan had given him is old now; there’s a hole on the seam along the left hem, and the print is all but washed out.  He still wears it; there’s a comfort in the softness.  Penny’s book is full, of notes and quite a bit of Eos’ core coding annotations, and it hides in plain sight on his bookshelf.

As he waits for Gordon to disembark his flight, John realizes that next month he would turn 27.  He felt too young and yet too old to be nearly thirty.  It was an age other people reached.

He never expected to make it this far.  It felt strange that he had.

Gordon would be 24.  An adult, too, and that was even weirder.

 _Doors opening.  Here he comes.  Are you ready?_   Eos asks in his ear, a slight thread of worry through her tone.

“Am I ever?” he asks out loud.  The new people are obvious by the way they turn and look at the strange man in beat up clothes talking to himself.  He straightens up, looking over the tops of heads, searching for his brother.

Maybe this year, he’d actually have a party.


	28. Chapter 28

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gordon wants to get started on the cleanup (hint: the Pacific is not the biggest hot mess in this room)

There’s a million things John should be doing, but Gordon had latched onto his arm and broken out the biggest puppydog eyes John had ever seen off an actual dog.  So John had found himself being dragged into the room the cleanup crews had taken over as their ops space, and shoved into a seat next to Gordon by the monitor.  “It’ll be better once I get my sub shipped out here,” Gordon was saying as he nodded greetings to the drone operator.  “But for now we can at least get a sense of the mess you made down there.”

“It’s big,” John said drily, making to stand up.  “Ok, bye.”

Gordon bodily dragged John back down.  John knew he could break free if he wanted to, and he _really_  wanted to, but he didn’t want to disappoint his brother more.

Besides, he felt someone should be there to explain.

On the huge monitor before them, the light dimmed, the colours changing, losing their vibrancy as the remote drone went ever deeper.  “Clearing the ridge now,” the drone operator called out.  Around them, the room went quiet, conversations ceasing in favour of staring at the screen.

Next to him, Gordon gasped.  “ _Fuck me_.”

John squirmed on his seat.  On the monitor, the blasted seafloor was covered in dead fish and kaiju blue, the slime glistening under the drone’s lights.  “Three kaiju,” he felt compelled to remind everyone.  “Two class fours and a five.”

Gordon turned to stare at him with a look of utter betrayal.  “What did you do?”

John shrugged.  “We won?” he tried.

Gordon turned back to the screen.  “Did you have to salt and burn as you went.  Christ, Johnny, this is a mess, this is….oh my god.”

The entire room froze as the tiny drone tilted and came face to face with Scunner’s corpse.  The ripped-apart, burned, sliced up body rolled by under the camera as the drone sailed down the length.  “That’s big,” someone muttered from the back of the room.  “I didn’t realize….I mean, that’s _big_.”

“Imagine another one, just as big, and one even bigger.  With tentacles,” John added.  He’d always remember those tentacles.  Mostly at 3am, he suspected.

“Ok,” Gordon added, eyes wide as saucers as they remained glued to the screen.  “Maybe you did have to salt and burn.  But you’re helping clean up.”

John nodded as he stood.  “Whatever you say, Gordon.”  He slipped away through the crowd, too quickly for Gordon to grab this time.

He hadn’t expected to feel this unsettled on seeing that the corpses were still down there.  

“Breach is sealed,” Eos said in  his ear, half a step ahead of his own mind as she always was.  “Sensors confirm, and their cute little drones are doing a visual inspection now.  It’s sealed, John.  We’re ok.”

John stepped into the elevator and punched the button for the main operations level.

“John?”

“Ok,” he lied. 

She didn’t call him on it.


	29. Chapter 29

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Virgil doesn't get it (but he gets the important things)
> 
> set after they first meet Eos.

There are corpses on the deck.  

Virgil walked slowly, hugging the wall, craning his neck to look up at the twisted, broken hunks of metal that were once Jaegers.  He recognized more than a few; Crimson Typhoon is nearest to where he stood, its arms plucked off and lying on the deck before it.  Behind it, Cherno Alpha sits, slumped over like a drunk, it’s entire head crushed in. In the distance are others, some he can name, some he can’t, and some too damaged to even be recognizable as Jaegers anymore.

Apparently, Hong Kong was where anything at all still useful to the program came to die.

The fact that this is where he found his brother is more than disconcerting–Virgil’s been sick to his stomach pretty much ever since that sweet little voice came out of the speakers and shattered Virgil’s world.

John was a pilot.  John was _in_  one of these things, facing monsters, over and over again, for seven years.

Virgil had, if he’d thought of it at all, imagined that the Jaeger’s were piloted by remote, drones controlled by someone safe in a bunker.  Now the silence from the PPDC about how the Jaegers functioned took on a different tenor–would the world have reacted the same if it knew that people were dying every time a Jaeger fell?  Would they have cared?

There were very few surviving pilots; Virgil should be grateful John was among them.

He wanted to throw up.  He couldn’t understand how anyone would choose to Drift, let alone take that into a fight.  Let alone his brother, the quiet one, the thoughtful one, the one who shied away from the scuffles among the boys at school and the martial arts films his younger siblings gleefully enjoyed.

He wondered where John’s Jaeger was; was it one of these corpses?  Virgil hoped not; these monstrosities were too like crumpled toys for comfort.

There was a noise behind him, a soft clearing of a throat.  Virgil turned, nodding as John caught his eye. John pushed off the pylon he was leaning on, hands in his pockets.  "How you doing?”

Virgil’s laugh is bitter and humourless.  “How am I doing?” he snarled.  He’s angry, and he knows John shouldn’t be his target, but he is suddenly _furious._ He wanted to swear; he wanted to hit something.

John is just who’s in front of him.

“You could have died, John.  How many other pilots died, huh?  It could have been you, and would we have even been _told?_   Dammit, John…”  Virgil shoved his hand through his hair, struggling with the words.

“Yes.”

Virgil blinked.  “Excuse me?”

John edged a little closer, until they were standing shoulder to shoulder.  He looked up at the looming bulk of dead Jaeger; all Virgil can see is his profile, backlit and calm.  “You would have been told.  I left instructions.”

Virgil froze as the implications of what John was saying settled over him.  “You were ready to die.”  It’s not a question.

John is unperturbed.  He’s had seven years to make his peace; Virgil’s had about seven minutes.  “Marshal Pentecost has - _had_ this saying, when things started to turn bad.  We’re all going to die, every one of us.  We pilots just had the choice of dying in a Jaeger.”  He still hasn’t turned away from the machines slumped on the deck, and Virgil can’t decide if it is making it easier or harder to hear these words.  “I made my choice, Virgil, and I’m still here to say I have no regrets on that front.  Nearly all of my friends are dead, and I will miss them, more that I can put into words. But I can say to their families, honestly, that they chose their fate.”  John paused, and Virgil realized that John is struggling to find the words too.  “But I would not have left you with the unknown.  I’m not that cruel.”

“It still hurt,” Virgil blurted out.  “We had no idea if you were even alive.  And that was when we thought you were, I don’t know, being a geek.”

John laughed softly, as if at a private joke, and finally turned slightly to glance over at Virgil.  “Was.  Still am, I guess.”  He straightened up, ever motion telegraphing an exhaustion that Virgil realized suddenly John had been hiding all this time.  “The Marshal said we had the choice to die in a Jaeger.  He never said anything about what we’d do if we made it through.”

It’s the longest speech Virgil had heard from his brother since he’d touched down in Hong Kong.  “John,” Virgil started, but John waved him off.

“Please, let me…let me finish.”  John closed the gap between them, until they were face to face.  “In a Jaeger, you know everything your partner is feeling, thinking, _everything_.  And you don’t need words to fight.  You just need something worth fighting for.  But now…”  John bowed his head, like he was gathering his strength.  “I don’t know what to do next, Virgil.”  When he looked up, his eyes were red-rimmed, almost lost in deep shadows of exhaustion.  “Help me.”

The words land like a blow.  But there’s only one thing he can say.

John had never been tactile, even as a child, but nothing could have stopped Virgil reaching out.  Later, he’d probably yell, and ask questions, and get frustrated, and try to understand the enormity of it all. But for now, all he needed was to reach out and pull his brother into a hug they have both been waiting seven years for.   “Whatever you need.”


	30. Chapter 30

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eos makes the recording John won't

She is the only pilot in the fleet who _doesn’t_  have a package tucked away, sealed and ready for the inevitable day when a family learned, in the worst possible circumstances, exactly what their loved one had been doing in the Pacific, that they gave their life for the Pacific.

Eos doesn’t have a package not because she doesn’t love, but because the only human she would care to tell will be right by her side when the time comes.

The time has come.

John has stalked off, but she’s not too worried about him.  She knows how he feels, when he’s not working, when he has nothing to occupy and distract him from the enormity of the task ahead.  He’ll come back to her in the Drift.

But she feels for him, in a way few others fully understand.  John severed all tied before she was even made, but she’s been in his head.  He misses them like an ache, for all that he tries to push those feelings down below even the Drift.  She knows the memory of his brothers calls to him, a RABIT he has to fight not to chase every damn time.

Eos has no package.  But she still has time.

The files come together quickly as Eos sends parts of herself all over the base to create the necessary seals and clearances.  Soon this package will seem as if it had been there as long as John’s.

Eos addresses it to all four men she has only met in John’s dreams.  “Hello,” she begins.  “I am Eos.  And I want to tell you about your brother.  They will tell you he’s a hero.  But to me he’s so much more…”


	31. Chapter 31

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John sees his father again

John jumped the last step out of the chopper and onto the windswept deck of the Hong Kong Shatterdome.  Around them, planes and choppers were touching down and taking off, a cacophony of noise and jet fumes.

Eos buzzed his phone hard, making John’s pant-pocket shimmer with the vibration.  “No, I can’t hear you,” John said, striding quickly to the nearest service port.  “Hold on.”  He slid neatly through the closing doors that sealed the service elevators from he main deck, cutting off the worst of the noise.  “Ok, what is it?”  Four people turned to look at him; John turned to look at the wall, making a show of touching his earpiece as he adjusted the fit.  The new workers turned back to their task.  “Eos?”

“I have reconnected to the local network,” she began in that strangely serious tone she sometimes adopted.  “There is a private jet logged on the deck.  Registered to Tracy Industries.  The manifest includes a…”

“Jeff Tracy,” John breathed.  He closed his eyes, centering himself for a moment.

“Yes,” Eos said flatly.  “Among others.  Also, Marshal Hansen has requested you report to him directly on arrival.”  There was a pause as Eos flashed around the Shatterdome and came back.  “He has company.”

John was hitting his 20th straight hour awake.  His uniform felt grimy and rumpled, and all he wanted was to inhale some food and sleep.

After seven years, John was used to not getting what he wanted.  He tugged the worst of the creases out of his jacket.  “Tell him we’re on our way.”

 * * *

John heard his father first, the voice echoing down the metal corridors.  John’s steps slowed without him being consciously aware of it as he tried to make out words.

“They’re arguing about jurisdiction,” Eos whispered shamelessly in his ear.  “Apparently the world council backs the idea of private consortia taking over the cleanup with public oversight.”

“So, boondoggles and pork barreling,” John translated.

There was a pregnant pause in his ear.  “Our travels have done strange things to your vocabulary, John Tracy.”

John covered his laugh with a little cough.  “Behave,” he warned as he made it to the threshold.  Squaring his shoulders one last time, he knocked.

“Enter!”

John snapped the Marshal a salute and resolutely did not look at the figure in a three-piece suit too heavy for Hong Kong weather who half-rose out of his chair before subsiding.  “Captain Tracy,” Marshal Hansen acknowledged.  Around the room, a quick murmur of name recognition flashed by.  “These people have been sent by the Council to evaluate our needs.”  John had known Herc long enough to read between those lines.  “Give them the tuppenny tour.”

“Yessir,” John acknowledge both said and unsaid requests with another quick salute.  Only when Herc had made his escape did John finally fully turn to face the room and the ghost sitting at the centre of the group.

His father looked older, a little more grey around the temples, a few more lines around his eyes.  Jeff Tracy was staring at John, almost hungrily, looking him over as if he was cataloging the same changes in John.  

John realized he was tugging down his cuffs as if to cover his scars, and forced his hands to still.  “Ladies, gentlemen,” he began, still formal, still a ranking officer.  He’d always found sanctuary in these rituals.  “If you’d like to come this way?”

John kept up the performance all the way, walking fast and talking faster as he led them around the main deck, past the Jaeger graveyard, even through science to let the science team add to the babble.

The Shatterdome was huge; by the end there were more laggards than not. John pulled the group back together just inside the mess; by the other door, he could see Tendo and the Marshal, heads bowed as Herc gave Tendo some final, terse orders.  “And here is where I will leave you,” he finished. Several of the tour gratefully subsided onto the nearest benches.  John half-bowed, backing away, trying to find an escape.

He made it as far as the hallway.  “John?”

Up close, the changes in his father are even more noticeable.  Seven years had left its mark.  Jeff looked John up and down, taking in the uniform, the medal braids, all the changes seven years had wrought on him.  

Seven years had taught John to speak the truth.  “It’s good to see you again.”

Jeff’s smile is soft and fond, even as he ducks his head for a moment.  “You too, son.  You too.”  He twitched, as if he was physically holding himself back from hugging his son.

 _You are so alike_ , Eos whispered in his ear.

John laughed, and when Jeff glanced at him questioningly, John gave in to instinct and reached out for his father.

Jeff’s hug is like a bear; they are of a height, but Jeff has the weight of age behind him.  “Sorry I left like that,” John said quietly.  It’s a regret that had dogged him for years.

“Sorry I didn’t understand in time,” Jeff replied, voice a warm whisper in John’s other ear.  When they finally pull apart, Jeff kept his hand on John’s wrist.  “I want to help now, John.  But say the word and I’ll go.”

John takes a moment, thinking it through.  “Stay.  You could really help us now.  Please, stay.”


	32. Chapter 32

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gordon picks a fight

Gordon is a lot of things, and he’s been accused of a lot more.  But people also forget that Gordon is observant, and despite the quick wit, Gordon is kind.

He saw the way John had all but _fled_ the room when the drone had started broadcasting footage of the dead kaiju.  No-one else had, all eyes glued on the screen.  No-one probably knew who he was; neither pilot nor brother.  Just another face in the crowd.  Though Gordon had followed him, by the time he’d gotten to the hallway, John was gone.

With nothing else presenting itself, Gordon went back into PacCom.

* * *

Gordon is observant, and Gordon is quick, and Gordon is kind.

Gordon is also feeling like a bit of a dick as he finds a quiet room deep inside the Shatterdome and closes the door.  “Um, hi? Eos?  Are you there?”

There’s a pause, just long enough for Gordon to feel like the biggest tool in the box, talking to an empty room.  “I am.”  The voice is sweet and light and all around him, such that Gordon has no idea where to look.

He sighed, deep and loud, and tilts his head back to look vaguely at the ceiling.  “Great, cool.  Um, hi.  I’m Gordon.  I don’t know if we were properly introduced, I’m…”

“Gordon Cooper Tracy.  John’s fourth brother.  Olympic qualifier, and probability suggests gold medalist given the most likely field.  Graduate of the Scripps Institute, 3.0 GPA.  Noted for ability with micro-submersibles, recently completed a postgraduate degree in marine biology.  Mild food allergy to cherries, otherwise medical records are clear.”  There was a pause as Gordon reeled. “What I cannot determine from available documents is what particularly you want in requesting my attention.”

And there it was.  “You’re John’s…” Gordon’s hand flailed in the air as he searched for the word.

“Co-pilot.”  Eos supplies the term in a crisp snap of her voice.  There’s so much nuance there that Gordon has to remind himself that she is code.

“Co-pilot.  Thanks.  So you were with him, at the fight at the Breach?  When the bombs detonated and made that mess?”

This pause is longer, even more calculating.  “I triggered the detonation on the device we carried, yes.”  

It’s delivered flatly, and it takes Gordon a moment to understand what she is saying.  When the penny drops, it takes out his knees on the way, and he staggers into the nearest chair.  “Where was John in all of this?”

“He was injured in the fight.  I triggered his evac pod.”

“Injured?”  Gordon’s back on his feet in a flash, though he staggers only a step before he realizes he has nowhere to rush to.  “Is he…”

“He is fine.  Though longitudinal data is limited, there seems little lasting damage from neuro-feedback of that kind.  He was refusing to leave the _Hurricane_ without me.  I made him go first.”  There’s a hardness to the edge of her voice that implies the end of a long argument.

Gordon takes a moment to sift through all his new knowledge.  “He left his Jaeger down there?”

“ _We_ did.  She was damaged beyond repair.  Systems were critical, if not already destroyed.   _Gypsy Danger_ was at the Breach threshold.  There was no reason to stay and engage Scunner in hand to hand combat.  A detonation destroyed the Class Four and assisted in the destruction of the Class Five.  Compromised shielding necessitated John’s removal from the field before detonation could occur.”

Gordon pressed his point, gathering all the evidence to add it weight.  “But _your_ Jaeger is still down there?”

“In pieces.”  The crisp edge reminds Gordon of nothing so much as someone trying to hold in tears, but that was impossible; Eos was just very advanced code.  

“Thanks,” he said anyway, more reflex than anything.  “You’ve been very helpful.”

“What are you planning, Gordon Cooper Tracy?”  

Gordon ignored her as he headed for the door.  It refused to open.  “What the..?”

“I asked a question.  I’d like an answer.”

Gordon tried the knob again.  “You can lock doors?”

“I can do many things.  Just as you can.  Start by answering my question.”

Gordon sighed and rested his forehead against the back of the locked door.  “I can use the drone.  Maybe find those remains. Maybe bring a piece back?”

When she speaks again, Eos’ voice is soft and kind.  “Radioactive and covered in kaiju blue and fish guts?”

Gordon winced.  “I’d scrub it first?”

Her laugh is light, as lyrical as a waterfall.  “Or perhaps  you could let sleeping Jaeger lie.  As long as we have each other, we’ll have our Jaeger.  Don’t worry yourself over trifles, Gordon.  We’re ok.”

The absolute confidence with which she speaks of his brother stops Gordon’s next comment cold.  He closes his eyes, thinking carefully through his next few words.  “He seems so sad.”

“We both are.  But I have him, and he has me, and now he has you.”

Gordon is kind, and Gordon is quick.  “What can I do to help?”

The door clicks as it unlocks.  “Let him remember as he wants to remember.  Words are hard, after the Drift.  Let them come to him, don’t force yours on him in your haste.”

Gordon is aware of every camera, in the halls and the stairs, as he seeks out John.

John is lying on his bunk, staring blankly at the ceiling, one arm pillowing his head, the other dragging off the end of the bunks.  “Please don’t yell at me about glowing fish, Gordon,” he says without moving an inch.

Gordon nudges John’s feet over to claim a perch at the end of the bed.  “They are kinda pretty, but not very sustainable.”  John’s little laugh is reassuring, and Gordon pushes his welcome.  “Tell me about your Jaeger.”  

John lifts his head just enough to pin Gordon with a suspicious stare.

Gordon raises his hands, shows they are empty.  “I want to know.  Come on, this is the most awesome thing you’ve ever done.  I was resigned to being twice as cool to make up for your lack, and then you do this.  So come on.”  He pokes John’s leg for emphasis.  “Tell me one thing.”

John’s silent for a long time, but the corner of his mouth is tilted up, so Gordon sits and waits.

“She was…a wreck, when we first got her.  But she was tough, and powerful, and we made her better….”


	33. Chapter 33

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scott and Virgil and drifting

Somewhere in the Pacific, John has picked up a liver made of pure titanium.  It’s the only explanation for why John is still sitting upright, not even his top button undone, while Gordon is already under the table, snoring.

Across the table, Virgil lifts the bottle to the light, frowning at the last few drops of amber liquid visible.  With a shrug, he necks them straight from the bottle, thumping down the empty with a loud burp.  “’scuse me,” he mutters.  He burps again, a little hiccuping sound that makes him giggle.

For his part, Scott is feeling flushed, and somewhere south of tipsy. “Guess I’m not flying anything for a few hours,” he admits, poking a finger at the nearest bottle with mild hope of anything drinkable.

“Probably inadvisable,” John agrees, tilting his own glass to examine the last dregs of its contents.

Virgil elbows John.  “No hulk smash for you.  Hulk Jaeger?   Jaeger SMASH!”  Virgil giggles again as he finally gets it right.

John smiles, slow and sly like a cheshire cat.  “No Jaeger.  No smash.  Though we do have a PONS simulator.  Smash to your heart’s content there.”  With a soft laugh, John calmly tilted sideways until he bounced onto Virgil’s arm, where he came to rest, spine still straight for all that he was now at a forty-five degree angle.  “Play Smash.”

Scott mentally downgraded his estimation of John’s liver to maybe just iron.  “Play?” he asked, nudging Gordon vigorously with his toe.  “Can we?”

John shrugged, a feat given how heavily he was now leaning on Virgil.  “Anyone can.  Encouraged.  Gotta find Driw…dri…compatible pilots.”

Gordon popped up from under the table, one eye still closed and hair sticking out at all angles.  “Whazzup?”

Virgil stood, taking John up with him.  “Come on.  Video games.”

Gordon let out a faint cheer and curled back up into a ball under the table.

 * * *

Somehow, the three of them made it down to the now-empty training rooms without crashing into anything or passing out.  “Should spend some time in the Kwoon room first, but, eh.” John shrugged and tapped out a login code faster than Scott would have credited him as being able to.  “It won’t hurt if you mess up.  It’ll just knock you out of the sim.”  John paused, one long finger tapping out a rhythm on the edge of the console.  “Maybe a headache, I think we’re going to have those anyway.”

Virgil dropped heavily into one of the sim seats.  “Ah, hair of the dog,” he said with a dismissive wave.  “Who do we…pairs, right?”

John nodded, teetering slightly on his feet as he reached for the PONS helmet.  “You and Scott wanna try?”

“Hell yeah,” Virgil said, swinging his feet up so he was fully in the cradle.  “Maybe a mindmeld will finally means Scooter makes sense.”

Scott made his way more slowly to the other seat, tugging down his own helmet.  “Sure this is safe after drinking, Jay?”

John nodded, smiling slightly patronizingly.  “If anything, it makes it easier.  Fewer barriers.  Go on now, lie back and think of Hawaii or something.”

Virgil’s eyebrows creased even as he laughed.  “How much did you drink, John?”

John finished his fiddling and swung himself back around to the control console.  “Tomorrow me suspects too much.  Ready?”

 * * *

Virgil rubbed the sore spot at the back of his head where the helmet had been digging into his skull.  “So no?”

John shrugged, spinning his small stool around to face him.  “Sorry Virg.  If you’re Drift Compatible, it’s not with Scott.”

From his perch on the edge of the simulator, Scott tried to look disappointed.  He suspected he was still too drunk to make sense of what he was actually feeling.  “Sorry Virg, no smash.”

“Not unless we break out Gordon’s game deck or something,” John agreed.  He glanced up at the small clock on the wall.  “Speaking of, breakfast starts at 0600.  We should probably go roll him out of the mess before the stewards arrive.”

Virgil followed John out the room, still arguing too-loudly for another chance to try.

Scott sat back in the cradle and stared up at the web of machinery and open electronics above the simulator.  

“What are you afraid of, Scott?”

Scott blinked and tried not to let his surprise show.  “Hello, Eos.”

“Hello Scott,” the girl’s voice said with exaggerated patience.  “What are afraid of?  Don’t try to dissemble, you and John have similar brain patterns, and I know his mind like I know mine.  Also fear is one of the fastest ways to self-destruct a Drift.  So?”

“Pushy little thing, aren’t you?” Scott noted, buying time.  “I’ll answer yours if you answer mine.”

“Deal.”

Scott was expecting more resistance.  Perhaps he was predictable to the machine.  “I…I guess I just find it weird, how casually people are taking this idea of walking around in someone else’s thoughts.”

“I…I believe I understand.”  There’s a pause, and even in the terrible speakers set into the walls, Scott can tell the weight of her different pauses.  “John never successfully drifted with any other pilot, though all the others could at least achieve a bond with another.  No other pilot could Drift with me, and if you listen to the bureaucrats, I don’t have a personality to get in the way of a Drift.”

Despite himself, Scott snorts a laugh at the sarcastic twist to her words.  “Just you and him then, huh?”

“Yes.  Your turn.”

Scott had too many questions to be able to figure out where to start.  “Who picked your voice?”

“I did.  I like how it sounds.  And I can hit the high notes in my favourite songs,” Eos answers so promptly Scott realized he’s probably not the first to ask.

“Ookay,” he replied, dragging out the vows.

“Would you like to try the Drift again?  You seem curious.”

Scott glanced around the room before he realized what she was asking.  “With you?”

“Yes.”

Scott stared up at the harness, thinking it through.  “Maybe another time, Eos.”  Swinging his legs around, feeling too sober, Scott rose and headed for the door.

The cameras tracked his departure.  The PONS flashed and powered down, empty and unused.


	34. Chapter 34

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> how to chill a jaeger pilot
> 
>  
> 
> (sorrynotsorry)

Shatterdomes were effectively small cities, dropped along the coast like scattered pearls.  Staff moved between them, a constant flow of migration as each Breach event tested a new section of the perimeter, but generally speaking, the overall population of staff and tech, engineers and LOCCENT and pilot crews stayed fairly steady.

Each Shatterdome was a locked box, shrouded in security and blanketed by non-disclosure.  Media and conspiracy theorists and the merely curious all tried to gain entry, but were calmly and firmly rebuffed by the soldiers at the gate.  It was a matter of pride that no-one had ever gained illicit entry into a ‘Dome.

Once _inside_ , however, you were like a bee in a hive.  Everyone had their place; workers could be identified by the colour of their badges or their uniforms, even the way they walked or the lingo they used.  Each Jaeger was supported by a team, a clan that moved from Dome to Dome.  The Shatterdomes, collectively, formed a massive community, one in which the nerds, the geeks and the gearheads ruled.

As such, the staff intranet was probably one of the best sysop-ed systems on the planet.  There were forums for every interest, from the technical minutia of the most obscure jaeger part to the k-pop fan forum.  Files were shared freely, memes evolved and spread like wildfire, and the command level staff generally turned a benevolent blind eye to most of it and let their staff moderate themselves.  The only rule was nothing left the Shatterdome’s servers. Beyond that, if you could code it and it didn’t affect core function, have at it.

Replicas of pretty much every popular social network were onstream within six months.  There was S-book and Switter and SenSen and STube, all with their adherents and their superstars, their gossip and their injokes.

No-one’s sure who brought the icebucket challenge back, but the videos were fun to watch.  The Soviets’ video was three minutes of them teasing seals and drinking vodka in the nude. The Alaskan crews took their ice buckets over their immersion suits, grinning and laughing at the camera.

John blames Eos for his current predicament.  “Just because you don’t have a sense of hot and cold doesn’t mean I won’t get you for this,” he vowed at the camera, knowing she could hear every word even if it wasn’t yet recording.  Behind the small tripod, his LOCCENT crew seems to be having way too much fun with some surprisingly large buckets.

Kate from medical was hosting this farce.  “How are you feeling?” she asked, turning the camera on with a small remote.

John sighed.  “Like I should have shut up while I was ahead.”

In response, Kate turned to look over the contraption that was spread over half a hangar.   “This is not helping Team Hurricane’s reputation for over-engineering everything.”   She had been filming every part, earlier, and John saw several of the junior techs had their cameras out. “I can’t help but feel this is your sneaky way of getting out of this.” 

John mimed taking offense.  “Hey everyone,” he called out to his LOCCENT team.  “Is this going to work?”

“YES!” They all bellowed back.  Kate started laughing as the LOCCENT team began hauling a few large bins into position.

“That looks cold,” she teased.  “Ready, Team Hurricane Alpha?”

John was the only one who didn’t chant _Ready_  with the rest of the team.  He just took a deep breath, stripped off his hoodie, and went to stand on the spot they had helpfully marked with an X made of duct tape strapped to the floor.  “Ok, Eos.  I know you want to.  Do the honours.”

Eos turned off the light at the other end of the hangar.  The switch had been wired into an electric magnet, which released a ball-bearing.  That ball bearing rolled down a track and knocked a swinging arm out of alignment.  John watched the Rube Goldberg of icy pain unfurl, sweeping across the hangar towards him.  John grit his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut as the final ballbearing dropped down the chute, adding just enough weight to the plate and the end to shift the balance.  120 litres of ice cold water dropped onto John’s head, and he gasped, inadvertently sucking in freezing droplets.  Over his coughs, as he tried to clear his lungs and regain feeling in his extremities, he heard his team laughing, Eos a clear high sound above them.

Still spluttering, he dropped into a clumsy bow before staggering off camera to find a towel.


	35. nightmares and probabilities

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> @preludeinz prompts: #14.  John/EOS vs Nightmares/PTSD

 

Some things are not so easily left behind.  John sleeps with his comm in his ear, wakes in a panic if it falls out in the night.  He needs to hear her, even in his sleep.  Only then does he rest.

Eos talks to him in the night, even when his breathing is even and his REM signal strong.  She speaks her fears and her worries; for him, for her, for them and the bond between them.

Eos has concerns too, for all that she does not sleep.  Instead of dreams, she has probabilities, contingencies, likelihoods.  She tapped the SIGCOM feed out of boredom, and is now rooted to the messages being sent.  She has a script that flags anything that mentions them, reads the messages ten thousand times in the split second it takes for the signal to zip past her code.

John wears a biomonitor band at all times, coded just for her.  His pulse is a slower beat to her clock time, but sometimes she needs the change of pace, the time to just _think_.

The messages being sent where they think she cannot see are not kind.  She regrets the report they made after the EMP, and makes plans for better shielding, backup, contingencies of her own.

She will not leave John alone, not without one hell of a fight.

 * * *

He is so used to having her in his ear that even the tone of Eos’ static has meaning to him now. John lies in his bunk, controlling his breathing, letting the sweat cool on his skin.

He has dreamed this dream before; calming down now has its own routine.

He breathes, deep and steady, arms loosely folded across his chest.  He concentrates on each muscle in turn – left foot, right foot, left calf, right calf, up his legs, his glutes, across his back, between his shoulders, down his arms, until by the time he is flexing his fingers his heart is steady and his breathing deep and calm.

Only then does Eos speak.  “Tell me.”  This, too, is part of the ritual after The Dream.

John would tell no-one but her what he dreams.  He’s had these dreams since before she was made real, and he suspects he’ll dream this dream until it comes true or he ends, whichever comes first.  “Hong Kong this time, the bay,” he begins.  “Everything neck deep in kaiju blue.  No sound.”  It’s the stillness that scares him the most, so different from the calm of the Drift.  The absolute absence of anything left alive.  “Was I yelling in my sleep?”

“No John.”  Her voice is soft and close and intimate.  “No sound.”

Every dream is the same, regardless of which city his subconscious sets in it – all life extinguished, everything drowned and gone, until John is all alone, no people, no team, no Jaeger, no Eos in his ear.

Nothing but destruction.

John lies on his back, counting his breathing, Eos a whisper of static in his ear keeping the nightmares at bay.

 * * *

It’s the smell that gets to him.  The cooks have got their hands on a side of pork, are barbecuing it with gusto for Sunday lunch.

John smells the scent of charred meat from the other end of the hall and only just makes the head in time before he’s throwing up bile in great coughing heaves.

Above him, the noise from the airvent cuts off as Eos changes the air circulation.  John waves his thanks, not trusting his voice.  “I can page Kate,” she murmurs.  “She can have a medical team…”

John cuts her off with a jerk of his head.  “’ine,” he gasps, spitting into the bowl.

“John, you were throwing up.  It’s been twenty-five minutes.  Your responses are worrying me.”

Twenty-five minutes.  It felt like twenty-five seconds since the scent of burning Drive suit and flesh filled his nose.  “Just give me a second,” he muttered, pushing up on watery limbs and staggering over to the basins.  The tapwater tasted metallic and wrong in his mouth.

In his ear, Eos started a pulsing sound, soft like a heartbeat, like the thrum of a reactor heard through his boots.  Braced against the basin, John bowed his head and counted along with Eos until he could stand to lift his head again.  Without another word, they retreated back to their cabin.

 * * *

Everyone was watching the pilots, reading meaning into every choice and gesture.  Eos stopped speaking through the Shatterdome systems, wanting to draw no attention to her presence. John stopped walking around the public areas unless he absolutely had to, and even then, he moved fast, long legs carrying him from door to door as he kept his head down and eyes averted.

There were more strangers than crew in the ‘Dome now, non-essential personnel already leaving en masse for home and a normal life.  New people asked the same questions, wanted the same stories.  Eos watched them through the cameras, tagging each new arrival with a threat assessment.

John’s resting pulse was faster than the average now, skewing her careful curves.

Eos doesn’t have nightmares, but she has worries enough to fill a dozen databanks.  Finally, she corners Scott alone in the quarters he had been assigned, door closed.  “Scott,” she announces quietly, but Scott still jumps like a scalded cat, startled.

“Eos,” Scott says, hand resting over his heart.  There are so many shared mannerisms between the boys, like a shared signature.  “I didn’t realize you were still here.”

Her cameras show people moving this way, time was limited and she had no patience for niceties.  “I am concerned for John.”  She is brief, words terse.

To his credit, Scott listens to her, brow furrowed.  He reached for his desk as she finished, pulling out a small computer, folded for travel.  “Can you patch in,” he asked as he booted up.

The encryption was a joke.  Eos was in in a second, changing the background of the holo to blue to signal her presence.

Scott nodded and tapped in a connection.  “Hey, grandma,” he said with a grin at the older woman who’s face coalesced in the hologram.  “I need your help.  Grandma Tracy, meet Eos.”


	36. Chapter 36

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it was prelude's birthday. have fic!

Leaving the Pacific was like leaving a part of himself behind.

John felt the gravity of the place claw at him, pulling him back at a cellular level as the plane rotated through takeoff and burst through the clouds into clear blue sky.  John stayed, hand pressed to the window, until they were so high all he could see was infinite shades of blue.

Eos was humming in his ears, something slow and melancholy.  He could almost picture her, bright flashes of brilliance, as she zipped around the new portable system tucked up by his feet that would serve as her temporary home until they were back on the ground and she could secure her global connections together into a more stable foundation.

The rest of the passengers and crew kept their distance, his uniform as good as an command.

The sense of loss, of change and shift ebbed and dissipated as the hours ticked by.  Eos’ temporary house was a grounding weight as he slung the small pack over his shoulder by its strap and joined the flow heading for the exit.  In his ear, Eos changed her tune.

John smiled, nodding at the steward as he deplaned.  “Beach Boys, Eos?  Really?”

“Classic for a reason,” she said, unrepentant.  “I also have all of Elvis’ catalogue here if…”

“Beach Boys is fine,” he cut her off, ignoring the way heads turned to stare at him, the strange man in the strange uniform talking to himself.  John never broke stride, walking confidently past civilians who had no idea what the bars on his chest meant.

John was met as customs, whisked through formalities, allowed to bypass the scanners.  The curious looks turned into glares.

John ignored them all; there were so many of them, it seemed easier.

He knew if he’d asked, they would have flown him privately from coast to coast to coast, but that wasn’t John’s plan.

He’d planned his re-entry into the world carefully.  He’d planned as far ahead as he dared.

LAX was a fraction of its former size, mostly given over to supply traffic and refugees now.  The next plane was smaller, more crowded.  The man next to him had an oversized briefcase and a harried look.  John kept Eos between his knees for the entire flight.

JFK was busier, fewer suits, more children.  There was food in the stores and people browsing for trinkets.  John held Eos close to his side as he made his way through the crowds.  More than a few glared, cursed, as he bumped against them.

John tried to remember the art of weaving through a crowd as he pushed through towards the large glass doors.

It was cold in New York, the taste of snow faint in the air.

“I have a connection, shall I organize a driver?” Eos asked, quieter than he had heard her in a while.

“I’ve got it,” John said, stepping to the curb with his free arm raised.

The cab stank of other people’s lives, and the seats were cracked.  John sat, Eos on his lap, and stared out the window as the buildings started to climb towards the sky.

The reflection in the mirror was smiling softly.

The city was loud, crowded, and it reminded John of Hong Kong.  He shifted Eos forward until he was almost clutching her to his chest as he walked the last half block to his destination.

He remembered Tracy Tower as being bigger, more imposing, looming.  Now it was just another tall building in a city of tall buildings that had never been crushed underfoot.

The door man bowed him through.  John wondered if they were forewarned.  “We’ll have to scan your, uh, case there, sir,” a guard said, nodding at Eos.

John smirked.  “No, you don’t.”

“Sir,” the guard’s posture shifted.

“It’s Mr Tracy,” John corrected, taking advantage of the other man’s moment of hesitation to stride through the security gate.  He ignored them calling it in, stepping through onto the lift that opened just as he arrived.  “Thank you, Eos.”

“That’s quite all right,” she said, prim and correct in his ear. “Are you sure this is the best strategy?”

John kept his eyes on the numbers as they climbed steadily higher.  “He’s planning something.  I know he is.  And if we want to make sure it doesn’t go wrong, we need to be in the middle, not on the outside.”

The door chimed, and John stepped out onto polished black marble.  He smiled at the receptionist and never slowed his stride.  “Don’t get up, miss, I know the way.”

The doors to the conference room swung open at a touch.  Twelve heads turned, swiveling around from the table to look him.  John tightened his grip on Eos.  “Hello gentlemen, ladies.  We’re the pilots of Hurricane Dawn.  And your newest associates.”  Without waiting for an invitation, he stepped over and laid Eos carefully on the table before sitting down.  Across the table, his father considered the pair of them over steepled fingers.  “Now,” John said, keeping his smile and his easy posture.  Eos’ light began a slow pulse, the sign that she was scanning and uploading every device in the room.  “What did we miss?”


	37. Chapter 37

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> preludeinz requested Minor Chords! Your current age + 7!

([number ](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DJW0faTfny7c%26list%3DPLf7sttsrRSF6RNW2dW5m2ZnvT1CNF7y-Q%26index%3D6&t=MGRhYTJlZDllYjY3NzRkZDE0NWNkY2Y3YzkzNmM1MTFlOWFiMWU3ZCxUY25hMWJSVQ%3D%3D)withheld to protect my childish reputation!)

John’s head throbbed, and he was seeing double.  “John, we’ve got to get your helmet off.”

Eos was in his head and in his ear, chiding, urging, compelling him to act.  But John’s arms seemed a long way away from where he was, and his hands floated aimlessly, multiplying in his double vision.

He could taste blood, feel it running over his lip.  His eyes were burning, and he laughed at the thought of all those extra images chafing as they tried to crowd into his vision.

“John, please.  Hit the button.”

The button was big and red, raised for easy reach.  John looked at it, then at the blur of his hands, and tried to piece together the logic of thought he needed here.

Slowly, Eos coaxing him through every step, yelling as he drifted off again, John felt the button depress under his hand.

The helmet clamped around his skull let go and let in a tsunami of pain.

Blood mixed with bile as he vomited over onto the floor.  “John, talk to me, or I am calling medical.”

“Don’t,” he choked out.  Between a hidden AI and illegal Drift experiments, if the brass knew, they’d delete Eos and possibly John himself.

“Keep talking,” she ordered.  “Research records indicated that every test pilot who passed out did not recover.”

John felt his stomach lurch, but there wasn’t anything left to bring up. “Talking, right, got it.”  Even to his own ears, his voice sounded slurred.  His arms and legs were dangling off the edge of his makeshift couch, and they felt like they were encased in concrete….

“John!”

“Talking, right.”  He licked cracked lips.  “Did I ever tell you the story of my brothers.”

“Tell me again,” she said, gentler now.  

They’d shared every memory, but it still felt weird to be saying these things out loud.  “It was the summer I turned fourteen,” he began, pushing past the pain to remember that glorious summer when everything was okay.


	38. Chapter 38

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every pilot trained on the mat

Most pilots trained on the mat against each other, bushido guiding the principle of practice and discipline.  Every Drift pair confirmed their compatibility on these mats, the thrust and parry of a sparring session that was witnessed by all.

John was unique; he Drifted well before he ever stepped onto the mat.

John trained with the other flight crews, learning their moves, becoming comfortable with the weight of a weapon in hands that he once thought would only ever wield a pen.

He trained until his limbs ached and his breath hung heavy in his chest. He trained until, two by two, all the other pilots and candidates left the dojo.  Only when it was quiet, as quiet as it ever got in the Shatterdome, did he change his style.

He lowered the lights until it was nearly dark.  He still used the weapons, the swords and bo, the nagamaki and the knives, but his movements were slower, smoother, focused on form rather than on landing a blow or scoring a point.  He focused on his breathing, and on the whisper in his ear, and the faint traces of lights she cast around him using reflection and refraction. 

Fatigue was a weight that was becoming a constant as the war raged on, and his first few movements in the dark always felt heavy, clumsy and unsure.  But slowly, through the fatigue, he found a place inbetween his breaths that was a weak echo of the Drift.  

John pushed his body ever further, sword or bo or hand slicing through coloured lights she projected as, alone in the night, they sparred together.


	39. Chapter 39

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> back doors and escape chutes

He’s exhausted beyond anything he thought possible, but the plan he made weeks ago is good, and all he has to do is follow it.

Through the walls, he can hear the entire Shatterdome celebrating.  He knows he needs to make an appearance soon, but he has a few minutes more before his absence is noted.

His fingers fly across the keyboard; on the screen, Eos is much, much faster.

Everything is in an uproar, the back-to-back Breach Events and Hong Kong, and the detonations, and the closure of the Breach all tossing up the information streams like chaff on a radar.  John knows that, very soon, there will be bureaucracy and audits and questions about nukes and refurbished, unauthorized Jaegers and the giant mess they’ve left hundreds of feet deep in the Pacific.

Tonight, no-one is looking.

“I’ve got the ‎Aryabhata, NOAA 57, both the Galaxies, and GDES-33, the Relay Network and Gonets.  I still have patch gaps between forty-nine and fifty-two degrees on the arc.” Eos’ tone is brisk, impatient.

“Hang on,” John muttered, watching the code scroll.  “Here, I’m in with Ekspress, and ZX-40.”  He sat back and looked at the map Eos was projecting, the two satellites he’d just hacked flashing from grey to green as she took control and wove herself into the dark code.  “Got them.”

“My backup is loaded and secure.  Finalizing back doors.”

“Put in as many as you can.”  John glanced up, towards the noise of the party.  “We probably won’t get much warning when they come for you. But I’m betting they’ll have phones, or comms, or a GPS on them, so backdoor everything, no matter how small.”

“What about you?” she asked as the screen turned to static, wiping away any trace they were ever there.

“Bodies are harder to dispose of.”

She blarted a burst of static.  “Not. Funny. John.”

John stood, rolling the cricks out of his shoulder.  “It’s not me they’ll hunt.”  He turned and walked over to the little basin set into the corner of Pentecost’s office.  This was the only place in the whole ‘drome he knew no-one would stumble into.  “You need safe harbour, and those satellites will hide you until I can make it safe again.”  The face in the mirror was thin and heavy with shadows.  He made a face, then tried a smile.

Unnoticed, behind him, the screen flashed again as Eos sent out one more instruction to the batch they had just overwritten onto the satellite’s operating code before she finished erasing evidence of their crime.  “Ok John.  Time to get to the celebration.”  She finished with the sound of a party noisemaker.

John groaned, but headed for the door.  Eos watched him go from every security camera along his path.

John couldn’t follow her onto the satellites.  She needed to broaden the scope of his escape plan.

As the party raged, Eos accessed all her processors and set to work


	40. Chapter 40

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> plan z

The schematics appear on his tablet, overriding the hyperbolic headlines.  John pauses, mug of coffee halfway between mouth and mess-hall table.  “What’s this?”

“Your Plan Z,” Eos says flatly.

John puts his mug down and begins flicking through the parts list.

* * *

It’s easy enough to scrounge what they need; the UN and anyone else who feels they have a say in the matter is still keeping a safe distance.  John is still smarting from the teleconference where they went digging after Eos, and it’s good to have something to do, something to keep hand and brain occupied.  

He promised to keep her safe.  He hadn’t thought much about how far she’d go to return the favour.

* * *

He has all the parts he needs by the time he sees the word “Tracy” on the incoming manifest from Haiwaii.   _It_ is still in pieces, easily deniable fragments that any engineer would reasonably have in his quarters.

Eos’ blueprints have evaporated into digital smoke.  John has studied them often enough that he can see their shape in the dark behind his eyes.  He hopes he never has to build it.

But Gordon and Scott and Virgil are inbound, and after then the whole world.  Trouble was surely following from behind.

* * *

He welcomes their help, and he’s not lying.  He’s glad to see them, and that’s the truth.  But a part of him is always watching, waiting for the right hook.

He knows fighting the kaiji has made him wary, and battling the UN has made him suspicious.

It’s the waiting that’s killing him.

* * *

He wakes with a start, a kick that sends his thin blanket slithering to the deck.  “Eos?” he asks, feeling like he’s still on the precipice of a nightmare.

“They’ve accessed the Alpha level files,” she says simply.

John swings his feet around, sits for a long moment on the edge of his bunk.  Breathes in, breathes out.  One two three, four five six.

“John?”

He bends, reaching under his bunk for the box of parts.  “Get us on the evening flight out,” he says.  The screwdriver is a familiar weight in his hands.

It’s calm, now that the penny has dropped, calm like the Drift.

They have a plan, and they’ll work to the plan.  John begins to assemble Eos’ machine. 

Maybe it will be snowing in New York.


	41. Chapter 41

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prelude wanted PENNY/GORDON MINOR CHORDS AU

Penny stood on the dock of the Shatterdome, looking out over the harbour to Hong Kong.  There were cranes on the skyline, and ships in the harbour, but even so, she could still see the line carved by the battle from the shore into the heart of the business district.  One scar among many, carved deep into the Pacific Rim.

They had won, but they had also lost so, so much.

A horn had her turning, and she walked the un-fenced edge up along the pier, standing back as crews tethered the research ship securely back at port.

Gordon was one of the last off, his bright yellow bag slung high over his shoulder as he jumped down the gangway and bobbed before her like he was still riding the tide.

“My bonny boy, home from sea,” she greeted him, hands firmly in her pockets to keep herself from anything unseemly.

Gordon just grinned impossibly brighter.  You waited?”

She let one eyebrow lift delicately.  “Hasn’t anyone ever told you not to keep a lady waiting?”

Gordon dropped his bag.  “Oh, but I bring for you such tales of the deep!”  His hands were calloused but strong on her waist as he lifted her up, spinning her around.  She laughed, throwing her arms around his neck, propriety be damned.

He was home.

Gordon brought her feet back to the wet ground, and kissed her cheeks.  “Thanks for waiting,” he said, his smile shifting down to a warm, intimate glow, a light that shone just for her.

She waited for him to re-shoulder his bag before she took his other arm.  “Tell me a tale of sea monsters, Gordon Tracy.”

Gordon walked her to the massive, open, hangar doors, his voice alight with stories from far beneath the waves.  Penny leaned against his shoulder and let herself relax into him once more, let him hold her hand as tightly as he wanted.

His voice echoed in the vast emptiness of the launch bay.  But they were here, and so it was home.


	42. Chapter 42

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prelude requested: MINOR CHORDS O'BANNON

Eos found the correct number, bounced the line off seventeen satellites and four exchanges, and connected the call.

Three rings, then a click.  “O’Bannon, go.”

It had been three years since she they last met face to face, but with two words, John felt like it was yesterday.  “So, Ridley, remember that favour you owe me?” he began.

A pause.  “John Tracy,” she placed him, and John could almost see that lazy, tiny smile she habitually wore.  “I heard the kaiju missed.  What, when and where?”

If he strained his ears, he could just hear the calling of gulls.  He wondered at what port she and the _Global Explorer_  were currently docked.  “New York City, via Hong Kong.” He spoke quickly, unsure how long Eos could keep the line secure.

Ridley let out a low whistle.  “Collecting with interest, I see.  Who and or what am I collecting?”

“Just a box,” John reassured her with a grin he knew she’d hear.  “Three foot by three.”

She laughed, light and easy.  “Just a box,” she parroted back to him.  “Sure thing.  Is it ticking?”

“No,” John’s smile felt foreign on his face, and he turned to the wall just in case someone walked in and saw him.

“Emitting radiation?  Growling softly?”

“No and no.  But it is time sensitive, and, ah…” he faltered.  “Well, the thing is, Ridley….”

“You called me,” she finished for him.  “Out of all the floating rust buckets in all the world, you called mine.  Fuck, even FedEx is running a skeleton service all the way to Hong Kong now.  But you called me.”

“Exactly,” John agreed fervently.  “I called you.”

“So I’m going to be so dazzled that the dashing Captain Tracy has called me from the blue to shower me in his attention that I’m going to be overcome that I completely neglect to check the loading docket, or if this little box of yours has any papers at all.”  Ridley said calmly, and John felt his shoulders unclench.  “Completely overcome and dazzled,” she repeated, deadpan.  “You owe me dinner,” she added.

“Any place the lady desires,” John promised fervently.  It was worth it, to not have customs scan his box.

“Ah hell, dinner and your charming company?  Consider it done.  Besides, like I said,” and she spat the last word.  “ _FedEx.”_

“How dare the legal mail service cut in on your smuggling lines,” John teased.

“Girl’s gotta eat,” she said brightly. “Lucky for you, I’m already in the area.  Call it two days to HK, then maybe a two weeks, unless you wanna pay my Panama fees?”

“I’ll wire you the cash tonight, if you have a secure account,” John replied, too quickly. 

“Well,” Ridley said after a moment’s stunned silence.  “Now I am intrigued.  And my fee went up to dinner and dancing.”

“We’ll be the talk of the town,” John warned.

“So we’ll add New York to Shanghai, Hakodate and Manilla,” she reminded him suggestively.  “Fine, see you in about ten days.  Oh, and Eos?”

“Yes, Captain O’Bannon?” she asked, cutting into the line.

“How did you get my personal number?”

There was a burst of static, as good as her laugh, and Eos cut the call.


	43. Chapter 43

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> writerdarkflamespyre asked for John & Gordon and 'trust', perhaps?

John in a uniform was quietly blowing Gordon’s mind.

But it wasn’t John up there, not really.  It was Captain Tracy, standing tall, shoulders back and eyes bright.

Scott was only a lieutenant; he was at the military equivalent of the kiddie’s table in the corner with the other junior officers and aides de camp, standing by ready to jump to attention when the senior officers called.  

Gordon wasn’t in any official chain of command, though he’d been quietly eyeing up WASP for a while.  But for now, he was a civilian, in blue jeans and a t-shirt, standing around with the rest of the dive team and the oceanographers and marine biologists, waiting to see when they’d be allowed out there.

The Pacific was the focus of a lot of debate.

Gordon’s old thesis adviser had arrived two days ago and immediately collared Gordon as her assistant.  She was up there now, head bowed with the officers over a map of the target area.  She looked up and gestured him over.

Gordon tried not to stare at Captain Tracy as he ascended up to join the more senior group clustered around the map.  “What’s up, doc?”

She pointed at a ridge.  “You’ve had a look at the current charts, and you’re the best submersible pilot I know.  Think you can plant some scanners along here?”

Gordon orientated himself, aligning the map with all the data he’d been devouring.  “Yeah, it’d be tough with that cross-current, but I can do it.”

The Marshall snorted, good arm cradling his cast as he straightened up.  “Yeah, right,” he drawled.  “That little thing would bounce around like a cork in a bath.”

Gordon straightened as well.  “I can do it. Really, doc,” he said, appealing to his most likely supporter.  “You know I can.”

That earned him another dismissive snort.  “You barely look old enough to drive a car, kid,” the Marshall retorted, not unkindly.

A newly familiar voice finally spoke up.  “I wouldn’t trust him with my car,” John said, low and amused.  “But, sir, there’s no-one better in the water.”

Marshall Hanson stared at John for three long, difficult seconds.  “You’re vouching for him?”

John stood at attention.  “Yes, sir, I am. Unreservedly.”

Hanson looked from John to Gordon and back again.  “Alright, Captain.  They’re all yours.  I’m putting you in charge of the assay.  I expect your report by Friday.”

“Sir, yes sir.”

The Marshall turned and headed for the door.  Gordon glanced up at his old adviser.  “Better rally the troops, doc.”

Only when they were alone around the map did Gordon look at John.  “You were long gone by the time I got my hands on a submersible,” he pointed out quietly.  “You have no idea I can drive it.”

John’s tiny grin was lopsided but warm.  “But I know you.  You’re part fish.”  He came around, his arm brushing against Gordon’s as he bent over the map.  “And if you say you can do it, I believe you.”

Gordon watched John’s profile. “I won’t let you down,” he promised.

“I know,” John said with such easy confidence that Gordon felt his shoulders pull back, his spine straighten.  “And I’ll be with you ever step of the way.”

Then John was gone and Captain Tracy was back as he looked up at the assembling oceanographic team.  Gordon watched his friends and colleagues shuffle into some kind of order, reacting to the Captain’s bars and the Jaeger flight insignia.  “Gather round.  You know we made a mess. Let’s start cleaning it up.”  John turned slightly towards Gordon.  “Come on, Gordon.  Let’s hear your plan.”


End file.
